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JOHN MILTON 

A SHORT STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND WORKS 



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JOHN MILTON 



A SHORT STUDY OF HIS LIFE 
AND WORKS 



V^ 



BY ,, jy 



WILLIAM P. TRENT 

AUTHOR OF "WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS," "SOUTHERN 

STATESMEN OF THE OLD REGIME," 

" ROBERT E. LEE," ETC. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1899 

A^/ rights reserved 



<; 



32479 



Copyright, 1899, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



TWOCOP,,, ,,,gg.,y^^ 










KortooolJ ^ress 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



U^\'?>3 



hk M n\ f\ 



TO 

RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D. 

©f ti)g Brittsf) IMusjum 

WHO TO HIS WELL-DESERVED FAME AS POET, SCHOLAR 

AND CRITIC 

AND TO HIS POWER AND CHARM AS A FULL MAN 

ADDS THE DISTINCTION OF BEING 
A LOVER AND JUDICIOUS BIOGRAPHER OF MILTON 

Cijis iLtttlc Folume is inscribcii 

IN FRIENDSHIP AND GRATITUDE 



PREFACE 

This book is a result of a conviction forced 
upon me by an experience of many years as a 
teacher of literature, that we Anglo-Saxons do 
not honor Milton as we should do, that we too 
frequently misunderstand him and neglect him. 
He is rapidly passing — if, indeed, he has not 
already passed — into the class of authors whom 
we talk about oftener than we read. In view 
of this fact I have here ventured to tell over 
again the story of his life and achievements 
in the hope that I may win him more lovers 
and readers. 

It may, of course, be deemed a presumptuous 
undertaking, for there is nothing new to say 
after Professor Masson's herculean labors, of 
which I have taken full advantage, and Mark 
Pattison and Dr. Garnett have covered the field 
admirably in their smaller volumes. But I have 
thought that the new book always has an ad- 



VIU PREFACE 

vantage as a literary missioner, if I may use the 
phrase, through the very fact of its novelty, and 
I have also hoped that a somewhat unusual 
grouping and proportioning of the most impor- 
tant biographical and critical materials might 
arrest the attention of at least a few of the 
many souls to whom Milton has become a name 
and nothing more. But perhaps I have trusted 
rather to the naturally contagious effects of 
an enthusiastic treatment of a poet who has 
inspired me with reverence since my earliest 
years. If this hope fail me, I shall at least 
not repent of having paid a vain tribute to his 
memory, for popular neglect can never really 
dim the lustre of Milton's fame, nor can an 
injudicious panegyric hurt it, and it is always 
a spiritual advantage to a man to give utterance 
to a love and enthusiasm for a sublime char- 
acter that have grown with his growth and 
strengthened with his strength. 

W. P. TRENT. 

Sewanee, Tenn., 
January 9, 1899. 

Hearty thanks are hereby given to Messrs. 
Longmans, Green, and Company for their kind 



PREFACE ix 

permission to use in Chapters III., IV., and V. 
of Part II. considerable matter first employed 
in my edition of " L'Allegro " and other poems 
in their "English Classics," edited by my friend. 
Professor George R. Carpenter, whose consent 
has also been granted. Much of the matter in 
Chapters VIII. and IX. of Part II. will be 
found in the Protestant Episcopal Reviezv for 
April and May, 1899; while the first part is 
expanded from an article published in the 
Sewanee Reviezv for January, 1897. 



PAGE 



CONTENTS 

PART I. — LIFE 

CHAPTER I 
Early Years (i 608-1 639) i 

CHAPTER H 
The Man of Affairs (1640-1660) ... 18 

CHAPTER HI 
The Supreme Poet (1661-1674) .... 46 

PART II. — WORKS 

CHAPTER I 
Earliest Poems in English .... 59 

CHAPTER II 
The Latin Poems 71 

CHAPTER HI 
"L'Allegro" and " II Penseroso" ... 79 



xil CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

PAGE 

"Arcades" and "Comus" 96 

CHAPTER V 
The Elegiac Poems 119 

CHAPTER VI 
The Prose Works . . . . . • 155 

CHAPTER VII 
The Sonnets 184 

CHAPTER VIII 
"Paradise Lost" 193 

CHAPTER IX 
" Paradise Regained " and " Samson Agonistes" 234 

CHAPTER X 
Milton's Art 249 

INDEX 279 



JOHN MILTON 

a SJ)ort Stutig of W ^iit anU MoxU 

PART I.— LIFE 
CHAPTER I 

EARLY YEARS (1608-1639) 

The fact that Milton was born in London on 
December 9, 1608, counts for not a little in his 
career. He was born early enough to catch 
much of the power and inspiration of the age 
of Elizabeth, but not early enough to catch its 
spirit of universal open-mindedness and free- 
heartedness. Thus it happens that some of the 
finest qualities of Shakspere, who epitomized 
the Elizabethans, are found in Milton in a state 
of arrested development, — for example, genial 
humor and, in a less degree, human sympathy. 
Had Milton been born twenty years earlier, 
it is possible that he might have surpassed 
Shakspere in totality of accomplishment, just 



2 JOHN MILTON 

as the latter surpassed Marlowe ; for in point 
of grandeur, both of work and of character, 
the advantage seems to lie with Milton. Had 
his connections been even more entirely with 
the country instead of with the capital, the 
centre of political and religious activity, he 
might have lived his life under the spell of 
the Elizabethans, and left behind him poetical 
works more serenely, less strenuously artistic, 
than those we now possess, but also of wider 
range in point of underlying qualities. Yet 
these are might-have-beens, and some of us 
would not have Milton other than he is, — the 
greatest artist, man of letters, and ideal patriot, 
as we think, that the world has ever known. 
There are, however, certain points about his 
early career which are not at all hypothetical, 
and deserve careful though not, in this con- 
nection, minutely detailed attention. 

He was the third child and namesake of 
a prosperous scrivener, of respectable family, 
whose puritanical leanings did not prevent him 
from conforming to the Established Church, 
from cultivating, with some success, the art 
of music, and from giving his children a broad 



LIFE 3 

education and a pleasant, happy home. From 
this father Milton probably inherited much of 
his genius, — a genius fostered by the wisdom 
and liberality of the parent to an extent that 
can scarcely be paralleled in our literary annals, 
save in the cases of Robert Browning and . 
John Stuart Mill. That the youth was grateful 
is evidenced by his fine Latin verses, *' Ad 
Patrem," especially by the lines: — 

" Hoc utcumque tibi gratum, pater optime, carmen 
Exiguum meditatur opus ; nee novimus ipsi 
Aptius a nobis quae possint munera donis 
Respondere tuis, quamvis nee maxima possint 
Respondere tuis, nedum ut par gratia donis 
Esse queat vacuis quae redditur arida verbis." ^ 

To his mother also, whose maiden name, 
Sarah Jeffrey, has been only recently ascer- 
tained, he owed not a little as every good man 
does, as well as to his early tutors with whom 

1 Thus rendered by Cowper : — 

" For thee, my Father! howsoe'er it please, 
She frames this slender work, nor know I aught 
That may thy gifts more suitably requite; 
Though to requite them suitably would ask 
Returns much nobler, and surpassing far 
The meagre stores of verbal gratitude." 



4 JOHN MILTON 

he seems to have been on especially affectionate 
terms. One of these, Thomas Young, is still 
remembered by scholars as a Presbyterian con- 
troversiahst of note, but his surest title to fame 
is found in these four lines of his pupil's : — 

" Primus ego Aonios illo praeeimte recessus 
Lustrabam, et bifidi sacra vireta jugi, 
Pieriosque hausi latices, Clioque favente 
Castalio sparsi lasta ter ora mero." ^ 

Thus we see that the boy was grateful to his 
father and his teachers, and we have his sub- 
sequent testimony that he was so much in love 
with learning that from the early age of twelve 
he scarcely ever quit his lessons before mid- 
night.2 Yet there is nothing to show that then 
or afterward he was anything of a prig, and 
it is clear that he must have enjoyed and prof- 
ited from his intercourse with the noted musi- 

1 Thus rendered by Cowper : — 

" First led by him through sweet Aonian shade, 
Each sacred haunt of Pindus I survey'd ; 
And favored by the muse, whom I implored. 
Thrice on my lip the hallow'd stream I pour'd." 

2 See the long and fine autobiographical passage in the 
" Second Defence" — the source of much of our best informa- 
tion about Milton. 



LIFE 5 

cians that frequented his father's house. The 
phrase so loosely used by us, a liberal education, 
applies in full force to Milton — his was the 
education given by good training, by contact 
with ripe minds and with sound learning, and 
by practice in the liberalizing art of music. 
Nor was that finer element of a well-spent 
youth, friendship with a companion of the same 
age and sex, lacking to him. His intimacy 
with Charles Diodati, the son of an Italian 
physician settled in London for religious rea- 
sons, left its mark, we cannot doubt, on Milton's 
character as well as upon his Latin verses. 
Diodati's devotion has been repaid by the. 
" Epitaphium Damonis," but Milton's has not 
been sufficiently remembered by those who 
insist that he was practically devoid of the 
intimate human sympathies. No man destitute 
of such sympathies could have written such 
poetry as Milton's, but it is fair to say that 
the direct influence of his fellows counted 
for less with him than with any other great 
world poet. Yet he is also the sublimest, 
though not the most universal of the poets, and 
perhaps in his case and always, subHme eleva- 



6 JOHN MILTON 

tion is obtained only through isolation. Be this 
as it may, the indirect influence of men through 
their books counted for more with Milton than 
can be estimated in words. From his earliest 
youth he was not merely an earnest student 
but an unsatiated reader, and to this day he 
stands as our most learned poet and cultured 
artist, Ben Jonson not excepted. 

About 1620 Milton entered St. Paul's School 
as a day-scholar and remained there until 1625, 
when he commenced residence, during the 
Easter term, at Christ's College, Cambridge. 
At school he profited from the acquirements, 
both in the classics and in the vernacular, of 
the head-master Dr. Alexander Gill, and some- 
what from the friendship of the latter's able 
but rather graceless son, namesake, and assist- 
ant. Here, too, he formed his friendship with 
Diodati and began his apprenticeship as a poet 
by paraphrases of Psalms cxiv. and cxxxvi. — 
exercises which, if reminiscential of the work 
of other poets, nevertheless deserve the praise 
of Dr. Garnett as being in general tone both 
"masculine and emphatic." 

Why his father should have selected Cam- 



LIFE 7 

bridge for him is uncertain, but it is quite clear 
that although Milton continued his university 
studies for seven years, taking his B.A. in 1629 
and his M.A. in 1632, he did not enter into the 
spirit of the place. He tells us in one of his con- 
troversial tracts that he "never greatly admired" 
it in his youth, and one of his Latin academical 
exercises lets us see that he probably indulged 
in strictures on the methods of instruction. 
From the elaborate account of the Cambridge 
of the time put together by Professor Masson 
one is incUned to infer that the studious and 
well-trained undergraduate had reason for his 
criticisms. There were able men among the 
instructors, but none capable of arousing the 
enthusiasm of a self-contained youth Hke Mil- 
ton ; and although the poet John Cleveland, and 
Henry More, the Platonist, were members of 
his college, they were his juniors in age and 
standing. Yet we have Milton's word for it 
that the fellows of Christ's treated him with 
" more than ordinary respect," and we know 
that he was several times accorded the honor 
of selection as a public speaker. As for the 
story that he was actually whipped by his un- 



8 JOHN MILTON 

sympathetic tutor, William Chappell, a tool of 
Laud's, we may dismiss it as an idle tale, or 
else as a distorted version of a personal en- 
counter between pupil and instructor. Never- 
theless the fact remains clear that Milton heads 
the list of great English men of letters who 
have been out of sympathy with their universi- 
ties — a list that includes Dryden and Gibbon 
and Shelley and Byron. 

Yet during these college years he was lay- 
ing the broad foundations of his character 
and his culture. The personal purity pre- 
served through all temptation and ridicule (his 
fellow-students' dubbed him "Lady" as much 
on this account, we cannot doubt, as because 
of his conspicuous beauty of face and figure), 
enabled him to expound as no other poet has 

ever done 

" the sage 

And serious doctrine of Virginity ; " 

the self-absorption in the pursuit of high 
ideals, the proud aloofness from common 
things and common men that characterized 
him, may have lessened his human sympa- 
thies, but assuredly made possible that su- 



LIFE 9 

premely ideal love of religion and his native 
land that prompted and accomplished as noble 
a deed of patriotic self-sacrifice as has yet 
been recorded to the credit of the race ; and 
finally it is hard to believe that he would ever 
have become master of so profound and exact 
an erudition and so serene and balanced a 
culture, had he not profited by that systematic 
training and discipline of the faculties which 
is imparted in full measure by a historic uni- 
versity alone. It should be remembered fur- 
thermore that during his university career he 
found time and inspiration to write much of 
his Latin verse, as well as such great English 
poems as the ode *' On the Morning of Christ's 
Nativity," the epitaph ''On Shakspere," and 
the sonnet "On his being arrived at the age 
of twenty-three." This was no slight achieve- 
ment in verse, especially if we add two serious 
and good elegies, two humorous ones, two frag- 
ments, and perhaps the exquisite '' Song on 
May Morning"; but more important was the 
formation of the resolution to which he ever 
afterward adhered — to order his life 
"As ever in his great Task-Master's eye." 



10 JOHN MILTON 

When he left Cambridge he betook himself 
to his father's halfway suburban residence 
at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. Although he 
had criticised the administration of the univer- 
sity, he seems to have been pressed to take 
a fellowship, but that would have meant prac- 
tically taking orders ; and while such had once 
been his intention, he felt now that he could 
not conscientiously pursue the latter course. 
The church service could not have been very 
irksome to him, for he had borne it daily for 
seven years ; nor could theological difficulties 
have beset him greatly, for he subscribed the 
Articles on taking his degree, and his Arian 
proclivities were a matter of later years. It 
was at the ecclesiastical organization then con- 
trolled by Laud, who was fostering to the best 
of his abilities and in a peculiarly exasperating 
way the high-church reaction, that the Puritan 
idealist looked askance. He would not " sub- 
scribe slave " even though he were conscious 
that with his scholarly tastes he would find it 
hard to discover a better profession. He pre- 
ferred to be '' church-outed by the prelates " 
and was nobly serious if also somewhat stiff- 



LIFE 1 1 

necked about it. Had he continued at Cam- 
bridge he would assuredly have been the 
centre of many an academic dispute ; it is im- 
possible to say what would have happened 
had he entered the Church in any active way 
and been brought into personal contact with 
Laud. He would have gone down tempo- 
rarily before bigotry in power ; but the genius 
even of a Boswell would have failed to do 
justice to an encounter that would have re- 
quired a Shakspere. 

If Milton read his own character as we now 
do, and restrained his ardent nature that he 
might allow his powers to ripen through soli- 
tude and study, he more than deserves the 
epithets he bestowed upon his favorite Spen- 
ser — "sage and serious." If he did not fully 
understand himself, but simply felt conscious 
of high powers and a mission to fulfil, he de- 
serves all the praise that belongs so amply 
to those " who only stand and wait." But 
much praise is due to the father also who, 
now that his active life was over and his 
chief interests were necessarily centred in the 
success of his children, was content to do his 



12 JOHN MILTON 

share of waiting till the genius of his son 
should, in the fulness of time, become mani- 
fest to the world. That genius was slowly 
developing itself through study, contemplation, 
intercourse with nature, and occasional woo- 
ing of the muse. He mastered the ancient 
classics and the chief writers of more recent 
times until he may be said to have lived with 
them. He contemplated life with all its pos- 
sibilities, and became more firmly fixed in his 
determination to devote himself to the service 
of humanity, to lead a life that should be a 
true poem, and to leave behind him some 
child of his imagination that posterity would 
tiot willingly let die. He watched, too, with 
poignant anguish the headlong course of 
Charles and Laud, toward destruction, and saw 
that they would involve in ruin not merely 
themselves and the Church, but the nation 
for which he already felt the burning passion 
of the man who not loving easily, loves the 
more deeply. ,!But he contemplated also the 
serene beauty of the peaceful landscape around 
him, and the spirit of nature took hold upon 
him — not as it had done on Shakspere and 



LIFE 1 3 

was to do on Wordsworth and Byron — but in 
a true, noble, arid powerful way. Finally he 
wrote verse to relieve his pent-up feeUngs or 
to oblige friends, yet never without keeping 
his eyes fixed on the masters of his craft and 
registering a solemn vow not to allow himself 
to be tempted by easy praise to abandon the 
arduous upward path on which his feet were 
set. It is to the five years (1632-1637) spent 
at Horton that we are said to owe " L' Allegro," 
"II Penseroso," *' Arcades," " Comus," and 
" Lycidas " — poems so perfect that many critics 
laying aside their judgment, which must al- 
ways consider quantity as well as quality of 
work, have actually regarded them as the 
most adequate expression of Milton's poetical 
genius. This they are not if the subhme in 
art be accorded its true supremacy, yet they 
are at once so strong and so exquisite that 
the fact that they were composed at Horton 
should make the little Buckinghamshire village 
second only to Stratford in interest to all 
lovers of EngHsh poetry. ^ 

1 Milton tells us that he paid occasional visits to London to 
purchase books or to learn something new in mathematics or 
music. (" Second Defence.") 



14 JOHN MILTON 

In the spring of 1638 Milton undertook to 
put the finishing touch upon his education 
by setting out for Italy. The spell that that 
fair but fatally dowered land exercises on 
every liberal soul, had already been commu- 
nicated to him through the medium of her 
great poets, but it was not to be sealed per- 
manently upon his spirit as it has been since 
upon Byron, Shelley, Landor, and Browning. 
He was fitter than these to penetrate into 
Italy's secret, being the most artistic spirit 
England has ever borne, and it is interest- 
ing to speculate what a longer residence under 
the sky that smiles upon Naples and Florence 
and Venice would have meant for him ; but 
that was not to be. Yet we may be sure 
that no nobler stranger has ever since apostolic 
times set foot upon that sacred soil so oiten 
trod by alien feet — not Chaucer or Goethe, 
not Luther or Bayard. Shakspere probably 
never saw the land that his genius so. often 
adorned, and Dante was its native — and it is 
with Shakspere and Dante alone of all moderns 
that we may fittingly compare Milton. 

,The details of his journey are scant, but even 



LIFE 



15 



the few facts we know must be given rapidly 
here. Stopping for a brief space at Paris, he 
met Grotius, and then proceeded by Nice, 
Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa, to Florence. Here 
he was introduced to the most cultured repre- 
sentatives of that day of Italy's dechne, and 
frequented their academies, and paid as good 
Latin compliments as he received. He im- 
pressed all who met him by his beauty, his 
grace, his mental and spiritual attainments, 
and if the tributes paid him were extravagant, 
they nevertheless retain even to this day a 
note of sincerity. We do not know whether 
the sightless Galileo thought him an angel or 
an Angle, but it is easy to agree with Dr. 
Garnett that — " the meeting between the two 
great blind men of their century is one of the 
most picturesque in history ; it would have 
been more pathetic still if Galileo could have 
known that his name would be written in 
* Paradise Lost,' or Milton could have fore- 
seen that within thirteen years he too would 
see only with the inner eye, but that the calam- 
ity which disabled the astronomer would re- 
store inspiration to the poet." 



1 6 JOHN MILTON 

From Florence Milton went, via Siena, to 
Rome, where he remained two months, and 
was treated with consideration in spite of his 
imprudent habit of discussing religious matters 
in public. He was fascinated by the singing 
of Leonora Baroni, on whom he wrote three 
Latin epigrams, but he is silent, so critics 
have observed, about the effects of antiquity 
and of modern plastic art upon his spirit.^ 
His natural aptitude was for music, and per- 
haps when later, his Puritan controversies put 
by, he took up poetry once more, his loss of 
sight inclined him to leave unsung the glories 
of arts he could no longer appreciate. It was 
different with nature, whose effects he could 
still feel and whose beauty he was bound by 
the scheme of his work to describe. 

Naples was the next stage of his journey, 
and there tidings reached him of the distracted 
political state of his native land. He gave up 
at once his intention of proceeding to Sicily 
and Greece, but was leisurely enough in his 
return. He again spent two months at Rome 

^ He tells us expressly that he viewed the antiquities of Rome, 
and the company of Lucas Holstein, the Vatican librarian, and 
other scholars would indicate that he did not waste his time. 



LIFE 17 

and an equal period at Florence, barring a 
visit to Lucca, and proceeded to Venice by- 
way of Bologna, where an Italian lady is said 
to have fascinated him. The sonnets written 
in her native language lend some color to this 
statement, which would at least furnish addi- 
tional proof of Milton's lack of essential Eng- 
lish narrowness ; but the whole affair is shadowy, 
and the sonnets may have been mere exercises 
in a strange tongue. It is better perhaps to 
lay stress on the actual friendship formed at 
Naples with the venerable Marquis Manso, 
the protector of Tasso and Marini, and upon 
the noble Latin verses in which Milton repaid 
the generosity of his host and announced his 
own hope of some day acquiring perennial 
fame through an epic upon King Arthur and 
his Table Round. It would be too painful to 
lay stress upon the anguish of his spirit when 
he reached Geneva from Venice, via Verona 
and Milan, and there probably heard for the 
first time of the death of the friend of his boy- 
hood and of his riper years, the man who had 
first brought him in touch with the beautiful 
land he was just leaving, — Charles Diodati. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS (164O-1660) 

Milton once more set foot on English soil 
toward the end of July, 1639. His first act of 
any moment was one of piety. He wrote his 
greatest and practically his last Latin poem, 
the " Epitaphium Damonis," in honor of Diodati 
— a tribute the exquisite sincerity of which 
its foreign medium of expression cannot im- 
pair, but unfortunately obscures to those of 
his race whose classical education has been 
neglected. It was also, with the exception of 
a pair of sonnets, to be the last of his elegiac 
poems, for his father's death eight years later, 
just as his mother's, two years previously, called 
forth no poetical expression of grief. For Dio- 
dati, the returned traveller could not but 
mourn in the language in which they had 
exchanged their innermost feelings, and which 
linked them both with the land from which 



LIFE 19 

one sprang and to which the other was still 
turning regretful eyes. 

His elegy finished, he set himself to a less 
congenial but in every way honorable task — he 
began to teach his two nephews, Edward and 
John Phillips, sons of his elder sister Anne, 
now a Mrs. Agar. He lived at first in lodg- 
ings, his younger brother Christopher continu- 
ing to reside with their father at Horton ; but 
in a short time he found it convenient to take 
a house in the somewhat suburban Alders- 
gate Street. Here he taught his pupils and 
watched the course of public events. 

Milton as a schoolmaster may suggest to 
some the veriest profanation of genius, to 
others that irony of fate at which we smile 
or jest; but no one who has read the tractate 
entitled ** Of Education," or rightly gauged 
the poet's character, or comprehended the true 
dignity of the teacher's office, will ever regret 
the quiet months devoted to pedagogical pur- 
suits and the "intermitted studies." So, too, 
no one not a hopeless partisan of the Stuarts, 
or biassed like Mark Pattison in favor of the 
scholarly life, will regret that Milton took in- 



20 JOHN MIITON 

terest enough in public affairs to smile at 
Charles's failure to subdue Scotland and to 
wait eagerly for the Long Parliament to throw 
open the doors concealing "that two-handed 
engine." 

But neither teaching nor politics, we may 
be sure, seemed to him at that time worthy 
of being made his permanent vocation. His 
note-books prove, as we shall see later, that 
he was meditating deeply upon the great 
poem he felt called upon to write. He was 
preparing to be a vates, when circumstances 
determined that he should become, not a dic- 
tator, but a dictator's spokesman and champion. 
For twenty years he wrote no verse save a 
comparatively small number of sonnets, and 
his silence during a period when most poets 
do their best work might easily have resulted 
in England's having only one supreme poet 
instead of two. But Providence willed other- 
wise, and our shudder at the risk our litera- 
ture ran should not make us forget the fact 
that to Milton's participation in politics we 
owe not only the most magnificently sonorous 
prose ever written by an Englishman, but 



LIFE 21 

also much of the force and nobility of '' Para- 
dise Lost " itself.i 

It was the resolute spirit shown by the 
Long Parliament in its early days, especially 
with regard to ecclesiastical grievances, that 
plunged Milton into politics with the resolve 
" to transfer into this struggle all Jiis genius 
and all the strength of Jiis industry." The 
humbling of Charles, the arrest and imprison- 
ment of Laud, and the execution of Strafford 
had shown the religious and political reformers 
their power, and had brought into prominence 
not merely men of action, but also a crowd of 
zealous and advanced theorists, and of vision- 
ary schemers for the ordering of Church and 
State. It is always so with revolutions. The 
French had their Abbe Sieyes, and we Ameri- 
cans had scores of theorists from Jefferson 
down. But no such ideal reformer as Milton 
has ever since lifted his voice above the din 
of faction, and if we convict him of partisan- 
ship, we must nevertheless figure him to our- 
selves as a seraphic partisan. To fail to do 

^ See Dr. Garnett's admirable remarks on this subject, " Life 
of Milton," pp. 68, 69. 



22 JOHN MILTON 

this is to fail to comprehend one of the most 
inspiring characters in all history, yet thou- 
sands have so failed because they could not 
forgive certain coarse expressions character- 
istic of the times and circumstances or because 
they were not capable of acknowledging great- 
ness in a political or religious opponent. 
Milton's fame has suffered from their aliena- 
tion, yet surely their loss has been the greater, 
for not to know and love the sublimest of all 
human idealists is an inestimable misfortune. 
That such is Milton's transcendent position 
cannot, of course, be proved, but it is perhaps 
admissible for an admirer to believe that no 
man ever got to the heart of the master's 
writings without being convinced of the truth 
of the statement. 

Milton's first utterances were naturally on 
the subject of episcopacy, the abolition of 
which had been proposed in the Commons, 
and as naturally they took the form of 
rather cumbrous pamphlets. To some critics 
it is now difficult not merely to see any force 
in his arguments, but even to comprehend at 
all the point of view maintained by him in 



LIFE 



23 



the five tractates of 1641-42. Minute study 
of them will convince us, however, of Milton's 
grasp of the situation, of his logical power, 
and of his essential purity of mind and heart. 
It was not to him a question of expediency 
that he was considering ; it was a question 
whether God or the Devil should rule in Eng- 
land, if not in the world. The subHme confi- 
dence with which he promulgated his ideas 
of Church polity moves our wonder; the im- 
passioned language in which he clothed those 
ideas moves not only our admiration but a 
sense of our infinite inferiority. Such swelling 
periods of prophecy and denunciation, of high 
purpose and holy hope, have been possible to 
one man alone — to the future author of " Par- 
adise Lost." Whether or not we love Laud 
less and Milton more, whether or not we seek 
the arena of religious controversy, we cannot 
but conclude that the crisis which called forth 
the dithyrambic close of the tract entitled 
** Of Reformation in England " was not lack- 
ing in momentous results to England's litera- 
ture and to the character and work of her 
noblest son. 



24 JOHN MILTON 

The outbreak of war in the autumn of 1642 
forced upon Milton the question whether he 
should take up arms in defence of the prin- 
ciples he advocated. We know his exact 
course of reasoning, and thus need not infer 
it. He could serve his country and his God 
better with his pen than with his sword, so in- 
stead of fighting, he wrote his sonnet '* When 
the Assault was Intended to the City " — that 
superb plea for the inviolability of the " Muse's 
bower." To blame Milton for not becoming a 
soldier is like blaming Washington for not writ- 
ing an epic on the Revolutionary War after he 
had sheathed his sword. The man whose imagi- 
nation was already revolving the war in heaven, 
was not wanted on the iields of Naseby and 
Dunbar: the prophet of the glories of a ren- 
ovated and redeemed England had faith 
enough to believe that God would, in due 
season, show forth the man who should ren- 
der those glories possible. He could not fore- 
see that the representatives of the people for 
whom he sang and Cromwell fought would 
one day refuse the meed of a statue to their 
greatest ruler and soldier; but could he rise 



LIFE 25 

from the dead he would set the seal of his 
approval upon the fiery protest against a na- 
tion's ingratitude recently wrung from a poet 
into whom he has breathed not a little of 
his own impassioned eloquence and love of 
liberty : — 

" The enthroned Republic from her kinglier throne 
Spake, and her speech was CromwelPs. Earth has known 
No lordlier presence. How should Cromwell stand 
By kinglets and by queenlings hewn in stone ?"i 

But while Oxford was protesting her loyalty 
and Cornwall was rising in arms and the king's 
cause seemed by no means hopeless, Milton, 
for the first time in his life apparently,^ was 
falling seriously in love. Exactly how this 
came about is not known. He seems to have 
gone to Oxfordshire in the spring of 1643 to 
collect a debt from a Cavalier squire, Richard 
Powell by name, and to have returned to 
London in a month with this gentleman's 
daughter, Mary, as his bride. A party of her 

1 A. C Swinburne in The Nineteenth Century for July, 1895. 
The Conservative government has since accepted as a gift the 
bust by Bernini. 

2 Unless we believe in the Bolognese love affair. 



26 JOHN MILTON 

relatives soon after visited the pair, and the 
young wife appears to have enjoyed their 
dancing more than she did her husband's 
philosophizing, for she shortly after left him 
under promise of return and took up her 
abode with her father, from whose protection 
she could not be induced to withdraw, in spite 
of Milton's protestations, until about two years 
had elapsed. 

As a matter of course this marriage venture 
of Milton's — the most mysterious, perhaps, 
in history save that of Sam Houston, the hero 
of San Jacinto — has been much discussed, 
and Mary Powell has found stanch advocates 
in inveterate maligners of her husband. An 
additional element of disturbance was unwit- 
tingly contributed to the controversy by Pro- 
fessor Masson when he discovered that in all 
likelihood the first edition of Milton's pamphlet 
on "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," 
was issued on August i, 1643, i.e. a little after 
or just about the time of his wife's departure 
for her father's house. It had been previously 
believed that Edward Phillips's statement that 
the tract was written after Mary Milton's posi- 



LIFE 27 

tive refusal to return to her husband was 
correct, but now this seems to apply only to 
the second and enlarged edition of the follow- 
ing February. Yet what sort of man was 
this who could argue in cold blood during 
his honeymoon about the justice of allowing 
divorce for incompatibility of temperament! 

Milton's foes would have his friends on the 
hip if he had actually argued in cold blood ; 
but that was very far from Milton's way of 
arguing anything. As Dr. Garnett has deftly 
shown, the first edition of the '' Doctrine and 
Discipline " was not only highly idealistic but 
profoundly emotional, and was just the sort 
of protest against his fate that might have 
been wrung from an intense, proud-spirited 
man Hke Milton in the days that followed his 
wife's departure. The second edition was his 
reasoned plea, though it too was full of emo- 
tion ; the first was the almost lyrical outburst 
of his deeply tried soul struggling for escape. 
If any one will read the noble preface, " To 
the Parliament of England, with the Assem- 
bly," he will be forced to confess that, what- 
ever were Milton's domestic reasons for writ- 



28 JOHN MILTON 

ing, he nevertheless wrote in all honesty, and 
speedily passed from a consideration of his 
own case to an impassioned plea for reform 
in the interests of the common weal. His 
resolutions were " firmly seated in a square 
and constant mind, not conscious to itself of 
any deserved blame, and regardless of un- 
grounded suspicions." He could proudly and 
sincerely say, " I have already my greatest 
gain, assurance, and inward satisfaction to 
have done in this nothing unworthy of an 
honest life and studies well employed." He 
could actually compare his new light on the 
subject of divorce with the gospel preached 
upon the continent by Willibrod and Winifrid, 
and conclude with that noblest of sentiments 
— ** Let not England forget her precedence 
of teaching nations how to live." 

Milton's tract was therefore sincere and 
characteristic of him, but this is not a proof 
that it was a worthy thing to write and pub- 
lish. Yet perhaps if we will read his utterances 
carefully and remember that he wrote at a 
time when every liberal mind was narrowly 
examining the structure of society and pro- 



LIFE 29 

jecting discoveries and applications of new 
moral and political truths, we shall come to 
the conclusion that he acted not only con- 
sistently, but worthily, with regard to this 
whole divorce matter. If we condemn him 
merely because our views on the question of 
divorce are stricter than his, — our ideal of 
a true marriage could not be higher, — we 
have just as much right to condemn him 
for his ultra-puritanism or his ultra-republican- 
ism — that is, we have no right to condemn 
him at all, for we are obviously called upon 
to judge him now only as a man and a great 
creative writer, not as a theorist in religion 
and politics. 

But can Milton be absolved of blame as a 
man for his treatment of his first wife .'' One 
may answer, "Yes, so far as the evidence 
goes." His demands upon the girl were proba- 
bly excessive, but then he was an idealist who 
had somehow made a bad match. If she 
suffered, so did he ; and the chances are a 
thousand to one against the grave, dignified 
man's having wantonly offended his young 
wife, while they are not nearly so great against 



30 JOHN MII.TON 

the shallow Royahst girl's having uttered light 
and flippant gibes about her Puritan husband's 
noblest and dearest ideals. As to Milton's 
alleged attentions to the '' very handsome and 
witty " daughter of Dr. Davis, one can only 
say that, in view of Milton's sincerity and 
courage of character, they are an additional 
proof of his determination to announce his 
principles and act upon them. The young 
lady and her parents were probably able to 
look out for themselves and must have shared 
Milton's ideals, or, in view of the danger attend- 
ing the woman from the state of the law, he 
would have been asked to cease his visits. 
To blame him for being " light of love " is 
simply to forget that strong natures bent in 
one direction rebound far when released. Per- 
haps Mistress Davis's quaHties were comple- 
mentary to those of Mary Powell, or perhaps 
gossips mistook a Platonic friendship for a love 
affair. Be this as it may, we know that in 
July or August, 1645, the wife surprised the 
husband at a friend's house, and that a recon- 
ciliation was effected. Perhaps, as has been 
urged, she was brought to terms by the visits 



LIFE 3 1 

to Mistress Davis ; but on the face of things 
her voluntary return is a circumstance in 
Milton's favor. 

This is not the place to discuss in detail the 
divorce pamphlets which proved too strong a 
diet even for Milton's coreligionists and had to 
be published without license — a fact to which 
we owe the greatest and best known of his 
prose writings, the noble ** Areopagitica, a 
Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Print- 
ing." But before the thread of his married life 
is taken up once more, it will be well to say 
a few words about his relations with women in 
general. He has been much criticised for 
them, not always with entire justice. If he 
did not enjoy much happiness with his first 
wife, he could nevertheless write his noble 
sonnet to his second, Katherine Woodcock,^ 
a sufficient tribute to any woman, though per- 
haps borrowed in substance from a similar 
sonnet by the Italian poet, Bernadino Rota ; 
while with his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, 

1 The second marriage lasted from November, 1656, to 
February, 1658. The marriage for convenience with the "gen- 
teel" Mistress Minshull took place in 1663. 



32 JOHN MILTON 

who survived him, he seems to have lived as 
congenially as could be expected when all the 
circumstances are taken into account. His 
daughters by his first wife have won a sym- 
pathy which they scarcely deserve. Reading 
aloud in languages one does not understand 
is not an enjoyable task ; but what are we to 
say of the characters and dispositions of women 
who could lack reverence for such a father? 
Admiration and sympathy are two of the no- 
blest attributes of womanhood, and who has 
ever been fitter to elicit them than Milton in his 
blindness ? Perhaps the best excuse for these 
daughters is the fact that they were trained in 
part by their mother. We may dismiss this 
unpleasant topic with the remark that it is well 
to note that in the scanty tale of Milton's Eng- 
lish sonnets there are four addressed to women 
in which there is not a line to make us believe 
that he had a low estimate of the sex, and- 
much to convince us, in spite of the often- 
quoted lines of "Paradise Lost" which repre- 
sent the normal view of the period, that he was 
at times capable of extending to them that intel- 
ligent admiration which the mass of mankind 



LIFE 33 

are only just beginning to recognize as their 
due. This conviction is rendered almost a cer- 
tainty when we study the relations of the poet 
with the famous Lady Ranelagh, the learned 
and virtuous Katherine Boyle, mother of " the 
noble youth, Richard Jones," whom Milton 
taught and to whom he indited some epistles. 
It will probably be impossible to root from the 
public mind the notion that Milton was a sour 
woman-hater and a vindictive partisan, but we 
may be sure that the records do not warrant any 
such conception of his character, and we should 
protest emphatically against such an egregious 
assumption as that of Professor Dowden to 
the effect that there is an unlovely Milton 
from whom we are all anxious to avert our 
gaze. 

Early in 1646, at the solicitation of Hum- 
phrey Moseley, the pubHsher, who seems to 
have known what a favor he was doing man- 
kind, Milton, who, except in the cases of his 
magnum opjcs and " Samson Agonistes," gener- 
ally waited for an external stimulus to literary 
undertakings, brought out the first edition of 
his poems in two parts, English and Latin. 



34 JOHN MILTON 

He prefixed a quotation from Virgil which 
showed that he regarded the pubUcation as 
premature. In view of the great praise now 
given to the minor poems, this attitude of Mil- 
ton's might seem to furnish fresh evidence of 
the irony attaching to the judgments of authors 
about their own works ; but if we can appre- 
ciate duly the transcendent merits of "Para- 
dise Lost " and will remember that the scheme 
of that noble work was even then occupying 
Milton's thoughts, his unwillingness to rush into 
print will smack neither of the irony of self- 
judgment nor of false modesty. Be this as 
it may, it was an unpropitious time for the 
muses that he or his publisher chose ; but it 
was not many years before he was plagiarized 
from in a shocking manner by one Robert Bar- 
ron, and if imitation be the sincerest flattery, 
he ought to have been pleased, but probably 
was not. 'Meanwhile his school had increased, 
and he had moved into larger quarters, whither 
Jiis wife's relatives, who had been dispossessed 
by the Parliamentarians, presently flocked in 
a way to make one suspect that they had had 
a reason for helping to bring husband and wife 



LIFE 35 

together once more. • Milton seems to have 
done his duty by them in an exemplary manner, 
and he obviously deserves far more sympathy 
than he has ever got. They inspired little 
poetry, we may be sure, but he worked away 
at his studies, gathered materials for his ** His- 
tory of England," and perhaps began his trea- 
tise '' De Doctrina Christiana," which through 
a train of curious circumstances did not see the 
light until 1823. In 1647 his father, who had 
been living with him since the lapsing of Chris- 
topher Milton to royalism and Roman Catholi- 
cism, died, and the consequent addition to his 
income led him to give up all his pupils, save 
his nephews. He also moved to a smaller 
house and got rid of the daily presence of the 
Powells. So he lived on and looked out at the 
swift succession of events that seemed about to 
change entirely the course of English history. 
He was still conscious of great powers and still 
yearning for an opportunity to do something 
for his people, but he preferred a scholarly 
seclusion, as he tells us, to a station "at the 
doors of the court with a petitioner's face." 
With the king's death, however, a change 



36 JOHN MILTON 

took place in Milton's affairs. Charles was 
beheaded on January 30, 1649; in exactly two 
weeks Milton had published his pamphlet 
**The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," 
in which he maintained the right of " any who 
have the Power, to call to account a Tyrant, 
or wicked King, and after due Conviction, to 
depose, and put him to Death, if the ordinary 
Magistrate have neglected, or denied to do it." 
This was a bold and certainly expeditious de- 
fence of the actions of his party — how bold 
may be somewhat realized when we remem- 
ber how the news of the execution of Louis 
XVI., nearly a century and a half later, re- 
sounded through Europe. Even the philosophic 
mind of Burke was unhinged by the latter 
catastrophe ; the former and more astounding 
event simply woke Milton up. Merely as a 
private citizen with convictions of his own 
and as an enthusiast whose dash for the 
breach showed him to be uninfluenced by 
political or other calculations, he dared to de- 
fend a deed which had filled a whole people 
with horror and consternation ; to the seduc- 
tions of sympathy stimulated by the timely 



/ LIFE 37 

appearance of the " Eikon Basilike," he op- 
posed the warning voice of reason and the 
high, clear strains of duty. If he took an 
untenable position in some particulars, he 
nevertheless put the half-hearted to shame 
and enrolled his own name high among the 
sons of liberty. The popular leaders could 
overlook him no longer, and he was offered 
the post of Latin Secretary to the Committee 
on Foreign Affairs. The salary was ample, — 
about ^5250 in our present money, — and the 
position such as even a Milton could accept, for 
he was not merely to carry on diplomatic cor- 
respondence in the language of scholars, but 
also to be the recognized spokesman of his 
party. In his own eyes it was the spokes- 
man of liberty and his native land that he 
aspired to be, and the proffered ofifice gave 
him an opportunity of realizing his aspiration. 
There could be little or no thought of a re- 
fusal, and he thus became, as Dr. Garnett 
happily puts it, "the Orpheus among the 
Argonauts of the Commonwealth." 

His first work as Secretary that need be 
noticed here was his " Eikonoklastes," written in 



38 JOHN MILTON 

answer to the " Eikon Basilike " of Bishop Gau- 
den, then generally beheved to be the work of 
the " Royal Martyr " himself. Milton seems to 
have shirked the task, knowing that to accom- 
plish it effectively would necessitate deprecia- 
tion of the dead king and much chaffering 
over straws. In spite of this known reluc- 
tance on his part and of the obvious fact 
that much of his matter and manner was de- 
termined by the nature and arrangement of 
the treatise he was answering, critics have 
not ceased to search his book minutely for 
data on which to rest charges against his per- 
sonal integrity, his consistency, even his taste 
in literature. But he was soon to undertake 
a greater task, and one that was to bring him 
more fame, since he did little with *' Eikono- 
klastes " to stem the tide in favor of the 
pseudo-religious martyr. The learned French- 
man, Claude de Saumaise, better known as 
Salmasius, the discoverer of the Palatine 
Ms. of the Greek Anthology, had been em- 
ployed to unmask the ' batteries of his pon- 
derous erudition, so valued at the time, in 
defence of Charles I. His '* Defensio Regia " 



LIFE 



39 



appeared in the latter part of 1649, and Milton 
was directed by the Council to answer it. He 
did at the cost of his sight. For some years 
his eyes had been failing, and one was already 
gone. He was advised that any further strain 
would speedily induce total blindness, yet he 
never wavered in the performance of his duty. 
He calmly faced the loss of a sense that 
every true scholar must value more than life 
itself; he put frorn him all anticipation of the 
noble pleasure he had looked forward to de- 
riving from the first sight of his great poem 
in print ; he may even have despaired of ever 
composing the poem at all ; he looked forward 
to the miseries of a cheerless old age, and 
without repining accepted a commission that 
could not under any circumstances have been 
specially grateful to him — all because he 
deemed it right that his country and party 
should make a proper reply to the charges 
that had been laid against them in the forum 
of European opinion. If a sublimer act of 
patriotic self-sacrifice has ever been performed, 
it has surely never been recorded. And yet 
readers have been found who could calmly 



40 JOHN MILTON 

dissect the " Pro Popiilo Anglicano Defensio 
contra Salmasium " and argue from it that 
its author had not merely a bad cause, but a 
bad temper and a worse taste. There have 
been critics who have imagined that it is proper 
to judge a seventeenth century controversialist 
by standards more talked about than acted 
upon in the nineteenth. There have even 
been friends of Milton who, forgetting that 
the man is and ought to be greater than the 
poet, have wished that he had never per- 
formed this act of self-sacrifice that makes 
him the true Milton of song and history. 

And now by the spring of 1652 the Milton 
who had won the plaudits of cultivated Italians 
for his beauty and his grace, the Milton who 
had looked on nature's face and found her 
fair, the Milton who had at last been brought 
to mingle with the affairs of men at a critical 
juncture in his country's history, was totally 
blind, an object of pity, a man who was ap- 
parently without a future. It was due to the 
fact that he was Milton and no one else that 
he did not succumb but became the poet of 
" Paradise Lost." And as if to complete his 



LIFE 41 

misfortunes, the death of his wife left him 
the bHnd father of three little girls. Under 
such circumstances he can have thought little 
of his sudden leap into European fame through 
the complete victory he had gained over Sal- 
masius. That victory, like all partisan victo- 
ries, was dearly bought, for the price paid was 
nothing less than the consciousness that he 
was execrated by hundreds of thousands of his 
fellow-countrymen. 

The literary duel which cost Milton his 
sight and Salmasius his life, according to the 
doubtless exaggerated story, was followed by 
a sorry squabble which would be regrettable 
but for the fact that it led Milton to make 
certain autobiographical confessions of great 
value. A scurrilous tract was written against 
him by a broken-down parson, Peter du Mou- 
lin by name, who managed to keep his 
identity well concealed. Milton was led by 
plausible reasons to believe that his reviler 
was one Alexander Morus, a Scoto-French- 
man, pastor and professor of Sacred History 
at Amsterdam, and a resident in Salmasius's 
household, in which he did not conduct him- 



42 JOHN MILTON 

self with perfect chastity. Moms, hearing 
that Milton was contemplating a reply to the 
anonymous pamphlet, and fearing the weight 
of his hand, hastened to assert his innocence 
in the affair. Milton would listen. to nothing, 
however, and published his reply in 1654. 
Then Morus was literally flogged into taking 
up whatever literary weapons he could find, 
but Milton crushed him with another tract the 
following year. We shall refer to these pro- 
ductions again, but we must confess here that 
nothing connected with Milton's life is less 
edifying. It should be remembered, however, 
that no man, not even a Milton, can be ex- 
pectexi to be far in advance of his times in 
his methods of personal controversy, and that 
controversy was a prime constituent of the 
intellectual atmosphere of the seventeenth 
century. 

Milton's State Papers are less disquieting 
reading than his controversial fulminations. 
It seems quite clear that while he was but 
carrying out the wishes and plans of his 
superiors in office he threw into his letters to 
foreign potentates not a little of his own noble 



LIFE 43 

spirit. Whether he was able, even before he 
lost his sight, to affect the policy of Cromwell, 
which he certainly ventured to criticise, is 
very doubtful ; but he was none the less the 
spokesman of his party while Hving, and he 
has ever since been its articulate voice. Per- 
haps it is just as well that in revolving in 
imagination those eventful years of English 
history we should not confuse the two domi- 
nant conceptions that come to us — that we 
should always be able to distinguish Crom- 
well's vigor and Milton's godlike utterance. 

The blind man's utterance was in some re- 
spects more potent than the Protector's vigor, 
for the latter could not be transmitted to 
Richard Cromwell or to any other survivor, 
while Milton could and did continue to incul- 
cate his lofty conceptions of the true nature 
of Church and State. His blindness and his 
enforced confinement to his home and the 
companionship of a few choice friends like 
Andrew Marvell, his assistant secretary, and 
the Cyriack Skinner and Henry Lawrence of 
the sonnets, doubtless proved to him a bless- 
ing in disguise, for he could not see how the 



44 JOHN MILTON 

fabric of popular government was rushing to 
its fall. He heard enough to disquiet him, 
and he doubtless brooded over what he heard, 
but his practical withdrawal from the world 
must have deadened the shock of the Restora- 
tion and rendered less vivid his solicitude as 
to his own fate. To those, however, who 
have studied the shameful history of England 
for the year 1659, the isolation of the blind 
poet but adds to the pathos of the picture 
he presents — a Republican Samson, captive 
in the midst of his contemptible {oqs. Yet 
even the pathos of this picture should not 
make us wish with Mark Pattison that Milton 
had never sunk the poet in the man of affairs. 
It seems as idle to argue that " Paradise Lost" 
would have been the poem it is without the 
poetic interregnum of 1640- 1660, as it is to 
argue that Milton would have been as great 
a man without it. Those critics may indeed 
be right who maintain that Milton's nature 
was subdued to what it worked in, ''like the 
dyer's hand," that the Puritan controversialist 
sometimes got the better of the poet long after 
occasion for controversy had passed away (as 



LIFE 45 

if Milton could ever have thought this!) — 
but such criticism means merely that Milton 
had not the universality of genius, the abso- 
lute perfection of artistic balance that char- 
acterize Homer, and perhaps Shakspere, alone 
of the world's poets. No one has ever 
claimed such universality, such perfect bal- 
ance for him ; his sublime elevation of con- 
summate nobility being sufficient basis for 
his eternal fame. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SUPREME POET ( 1 66 1-1 6/4) 

It is easy enough to infer that Milton did not 
fully understand the signs of the times from 
the fact that he published two of his ideaUstic 
political and theological tracts in 1659, ^^^ 
one, the " Ready and Easy Way to Establish 
a Free Commonwealth," not two months be- 
fore Charles II. reentered his kingdom. If 
he had understood the times thoroughly, and 
perceived of what gross clay his fellow-country- 
men were made, he would hardly have had the 
spirit to pen his eloquent periods. Yet he 
knew more or less what was coming, and he 
displayed his matchless courage in protesting 
the justice of Charles I.'s execution on the eve 
of the triumphal advent of Charles II. He was 
not foolhardy, however, for early in May he left 
his house and went into hiding in Bartholomew 
Close, Smithfield. 

46 



LIFE 



47 



If either king or Parliament had been bloody- 
minded, Milton would almost certainly have 
been brought to the scaffold. His writings 
were burned by the hangman on August 27, 
but influential friends made it possible for his 
name to be omitted from the list of twenty 
persons who were proscribed in addition to the 
authentic regicides. He actually escaped arrest 
for a long while, and when this came, suffered 
only from the exaction of heavy fees. Finally 
he found a refuge in Holborn, his nerves 
shaken, and his property greatly reduced, 
partly in consequence of his political affilia- 
tions. There is nothing more pathetic in his- 
tory than this return of Milton to the outer 
world. BHnd, reviled, despised by his own 
children, his ideals shattered, his health im- 
paired, he had but one comfort, — his undefiled 
conscience ; and but one hope, — the completion 
of the great poem he had already begun. 

But by degrees his condition began to mend. 
His third marriage restored order to his home 
and prevented his daughters from selling his 
books. His frieiids visited him faithfully, arid 
his organ was a source of unfailing pleasure. 



48 JOHN MILTON 

Readers and amanuenses were provided, and 
the labor of composition went on, interrupted 
only by his own singular inaptitude for work 
at certain seasons. By 1663, five years after its 
inception, the first draft of the immortal epic 
was probably completed ; in two years more 
it was in all likelihood fit for the printer ; but 
the fatal Plague and Fire doubtless impeded 
business negotiations, and certainly sent the 
poet down to Chalfont St. Giles, where the 
interesting Quaker, Thomas Ellwood, visited 
him and asked the famous question which prob- 
ably led to the composition of " Paradise Re- 
gained." Before, however, the latter poem was 
published along with " Samson Agonistes " in 
1 67 1, the greatest epic since "The Divine 
Comedy" had passed so as by fire through 
the sapient hands of the licenser, the Reverend 
Thomas Tomkyns, and had been printed by 
Samuel Simmons (in 1667) on terms that have 
been made the subject of many critical homilies. 
Mr. Simmons may have driven a hard bar- 
gain, though there is much room to doubt it ; 
but he did better by Milton and his epic than 
a good many modern critics have done who are 



LIFE 49 

not supposed to hold chairs in the School of 
Cobbett. We are told now that people do not 
read " Paradise Lost," and that its subject is 
antiquated and a little absurd, especially since 
the theory of evolution has thrown grave doubts 
upon the lion's ever having pawed to extricate 
his hinder parts. If this be true of the public, 
and if our critics are to judge poets from the 
point of view of Cobbett's so-called common 
sense or of Huxley's epoch-making science, it 
may well be doubted whether printer Simmons 
was not more a child of the muses than one 
is likely to jostle to-day on the streets of any 
of our great cities. But Simmons' s niggardly 
pounds have either been quite worn out or have 
forgotten that they ever took part in a pru- 
dent or a shabby transaction, and a similar fate 
awaits the Cobbett critics and the public that 
pays attention to them. " Paradise Lost " has 
set a seal upon Milton's glory that can be 
effaced or unloosed by angelic power alone — 
by the might of the angel who shall in the ful- 
ness of time blow the last trump. 

With regard to the pendant epic and the 
noble drama in classical style whose date of 



50 JOHN MILTON 

composition is uncertain, little need be said here 
save that those persons who refrain from read- 
ing them stand greatly in their own light. 
Neither can claim the preeminence in our 
poetry that belongs of right to " Paradise Lost," 
but none the less both poems are worthy of 
Milton, and therefore of our admiration and love. 
They may give evidence of the declining powers 
of his mighty genius, or they may, more prob- 
ably, represent that genius moving in regions 
less elevated and pure ; but they are worthy to 
shine through their own lustre, and to live 
through their own vitality. Their comparative 
unpopularity is proof of nothing save of the 
proverbial isolation of the noble ; but their exist- 
ence is proof of the fact that in a blind old age 
Milton would be content with nothing less than 
a strenuous and lofty use of his divinely be- 
stowed powers. He could not, like his Naza- 
rene hero, pull down the pillars of an ungodly 
state upon the heads of its citizens, although 
he would not have shirked the self-destruction 
involved ; but he could still sing in exultant tones 
of the triumphs of virtue and of the justice and 
majesty and mercy of God. 



LIFE 



51 



That mercy was shown him in his last years 
in fuller measure than he perhaps expected, 
or than his political and ecclesiastical foes 
would have admitted to be his due. He was 
passed by in ignorance or contempt by the 
great world ; but here and there a judicious 
celebrity like Dryden would pay his court to 
him, and the old friends remained faithful. 
The gout afflicted him, but not enough to 
keep him from singing. He had the pleasure 
of utilizing manuscripts prepared in better days, 
and of thus discharging his debt toward pos- 
terity with the utmost punctiliousness. The 
small Latin grammar (1669), the "History of 
Britain" (1670), the "Art of Logic" (1672), 
the tract on " True Religion, Heresy, Schism, 
Toleration" (1673), the revised and enlarged 
edition of the "Minor Poems" (1673), the 
"Familiar Epistles" (in Latin, 1674), is a 
catalogue of undertakings of no transcendent 
moment, but amply sufficient to prove that 
Milton did not pass many completely idle 
days;. His political and diplomatic corre- 
spondence and his treatise on "Christian Doc- 
trine " could not of course see the light then, 



52 JOHN MILTON 

but the latter at least must have occupied him 
more than it does most mortals now. 

Yet revising and publishing old works, and 
listening to the Bible and the classics, as read 
to him by his friends, and playing and hear- 
ing music were not, we may be sure, the chief 
delight of the aged Milton. Nor was this to 
be found in recollections of the tremendous 
and perilous times through which he had 
passed, in reminiscences of Cromwell and other 
great men, or even in pardonable pride of the 
qjioriim pars magna kind. His chief delight, 
in spite of his blindness, was in his visions 
— his visions of empyrean glory, denied to all 
other men save his three compeers. Homer, 
Shakspere, and Dante. With such visions 
he lived until the end came, on November 8, 
1674, having tasted the blessings of immortality 
while yet a mortal. 

But what, in conclusion, are the main ideas 
about Milton the man that we should carry 
away, whether from reading a mere sketch 
like the above, or from studying Professor 
Masson's monumental biography, probably the 
most elaborate tribute ever paid to a man of 



LIFE 53 

letters ? This question is not easy to answer, 
because it is never easy to speak adequately 
about a supreme genius ; but we must attempt 
some sort of answer. 

In the first place, we ought to remember ^ 
that Milton is the great idealist of our Anglo- 
Saxon race. In him there was no shadow of 
turning from the lines of thought and action 
marked out for him by his presiding genius. 
His lines may not be our lines ; but if we 
cannot admire to the full his ideal steadfast- 
ness of purpose and his masterful accomplish- 
ment, it is because our own capacity for the 
comprehension and pursuit of the ideal is in 
so far weak and vacillating. And it is this 
pure idealism of his that makes him by 
far the most important figure, from a moral 
point of view, among all Anglo-Saxons ; for the 
genius of the race is practical, not ideal, — com- 
promise is everywhere regarded with favor as 
a working principle, — and the main lesson we 
have all to learn is how to stand out unflinch- 
ingly for the true, the beautiful, and the good, 
regardless of merely present and practical con- 
siderations. We have glorified the compromis- 



54 JOHN MILTON 

ing man of action at the expense of the ideal 
theorist until we have deluded ourselves into 
believing that men, who are, above all, reasoning 
creatures, have succeeded best when they have 
acted illogically, and we have thus held back 
reforms by contenting ourselves with halfway 
improvements. A due admiration for Milton's 
unflinching idealism, both of thought and action, 
will at least make it impossible for us to 
tolerate the charlatanism of compromise. 

In the second place, we should admire Mil- 
ton's consummate power of artistic accomplish- 
ment. He is the master workman of our 
men of letters, and this genius for perfection 
manifested itself in all that he undertook. In 
him there was no haste or waste. Whether 
as a youthful student at school or college, or 
as a scholarly recluse among his books at 
Horton, or as a traveller seeking culture, or 
as a schoolmaster, or as a political and theo- 
logical controversialist, or as diplomatic secre- 
tary, or finally as a great epic poet, Milton is 
always found, not merely doing successfully 
and admirably, but doing his marvellous best. 
There are as few ups and downs in his work 



LIFE 5 5 

of whatever kind as are to be found in the 
works of any other man save perhaps Horner. 
He is always girded. Slowness and some- 
what of sluggishness may perhaps be charged 
against him, but in view of his lofty conception 
of the need of adequate preparation, such a 
charge must be very tentative. He is par 
excellence the perfect conscious artist among 
Anglo-Saxons — as unerring as Raphael, as 
sublime as Michelangelo. 

But he is more than idealist or artist — he 
was a superlatively noble, brave, truly conscien- 
tious man, who could never have intentionally 
done a mean thing ; who was pure and clean 
in thought, speech, and action ; who was patri- 
otic to the point of sublime self-sacrifice ; who 
loved his neighbor to the point of risking his 
life for republican principles of liberty ; who, 
finally, spent his every moment as in the sight 
of the God he both worshipped and loved. 
Possessed of sublime powers, his thought was 
to make the best use of them to the glory of 
God and the good of his fellow-man. We 
may not think that he always succeeded ; but 
who among the men of our race save Wash- 



56 JOHN MILTON 

ington is such an exemplar of high and holy 
and effective purpose ? Beside his white and 
splendid flame nearly all the other gr-eat spirits 
of earth burn yellow, if not low. Truly, as 
Wordsworth said, his soul was like a star ; and, 
if it dwelt apart, should we therefore love it 
the less? It is more difficult to love the sub- 
lime than to love the approximately human, 
but the necessity for such love is the essence 
of the first and greatest commandment. 

In conclusion, we may remember that what- 
ever may be thought of the claims just set forth, 
which will not be admitted in their entirety 
by any one who has not made Milton an object 
of lifelong devotion, there are two facts that 
render a study of his life and works essential 
to all persons who would fain have the slight- 
est claim to be considered cultured men. 

The first is that Milton has unquestionably 
influenced his country's literature more than 
any other English man of letters, unless it be 
Shakspere. Although he did not live to reap 
the reward of the fame that " Paradise Lost " 
began to attract, even before the close of the 
seventeenth century, he must have felt sure 



LIFE 57 

that he had built himself an enduring monu- 
ment. His conviction was true. Certainly, 
from the appearance of Addison's criticism 
of the great epic to the present day, no Eng- 
lish poet of any note has failed at one time or 
another to pass under his spell. Even Pope 
borrowed from him ; and Thomson, Dyer, Col- 
lins, and Gray were his open disciples. What 
Cowper and Wordsworth would have been 
without him is hard to imagine. The youthful 
Keats imitated him, Byron tried to rival him, 
and Shelley sang that " his clear sprite yet 
reigns o'er earth the third among the sons of 
light." As for Landor, Tennyson, Browning, 
Arnold, and Swinburne, their direct or in- 
direct debt to him is plain to every student. 
With regard to his prose, which has never 
been sufficiently studied, the case has been 
somewhat different. It is the old story of 
the bow of Ulysses. But it cannot be doubted 
that if on the formal side our modern writers 
look back to Cowley and Dryden, and that if 
Burke is the only specific author in whom a 
critic like Lowell can discover definite traces 
of the influence of Milton, there has never 



58 JOHN MILTON 

been a master of sonorous and eloquent prose 
who did not owe more than he was perhaps 
aware of to the author of ** Areopagitica." 

The second fact is equally patent, but less 
often insisted upon. It fs that in the tri- 
umphant progress of the Ajiglo-Saxon race, 
whether in the mother island, in America, or 
in Australia, whatever has been won for the 
cause of civic or religious or , mental liberty- 
has been won along lines that Milton would 
have approved in the main had he been living ; 
has been won by men more or less inspired 
by him ; and will be kept only by men who 
are capable of appreciating rightly the height 
and breadth and depth of his splendid and 
ineffable personality. 



PART II. — WORKS 
CHAPTER I 

EARLIEST POEMS IN ENGLISH 

In discussing Milton's minor poems, exclu- 
sive of the sonnets, it is well to adopt some 
convenient lines of division. There is so 
little that is juvenile about his work that the 
usual twofold classification will hardly suffice ; 
there is such variety that his own separation 
into Latin and English is not fully satisfac- 
tory. Perhaps v/e shall do well to adopt a 
new division of our own — to treat first the 
English poems written before the retirement at 
Horton, excluding the elegies ; next the Latin 
poems, except the " Epitaphium Damonis," 
and kindred verses ; then the companion poems, 
*' LAllegro " and " II Penseroso," with a few 
pendant pieces ; then *' Arcades " and *' Comus,'* 
both being masques ; and finally '' Lycidas," 
59 



60 JOHN MILTON 

together with the other elegies of which it is 
the crown. This division has the advantage 
of being sufficiently chronological, while at 
the same time it groups the poems according 
to their kinds. 

We have already seen that as a boy of 
fifteen Milton attempted paraphrases of Psalms 
cxiv. and cxxxvi. It was just such a beginning 
as might have been expected of him, and as the 
pieces probably represent all that we have of 
his ante-Cambridge compositions, they possess 
considerable interest. Minute critics have in- 
ferred from them his acquaintance with Spenser 
and Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas, but 
it would be fairer to lay stress on the original 
vigor displayed. 

" And caused the golden-tressed sun 
All the day long his course to run," 
and 

"The ruddy waves he cleft in twain 

Of the Erythraean main," 

are couplets premonitory of the splendid rhythm 
of the later works, whether or not they contain 
borrowed epithets. 

The English poems composed at Cambridge 



WORKS 6 1 

number exactly eleven, if the little " Song on 
May Morning" be assigned to that period. 
Five of these, the elegies on the ** Fair Infant " 
and the Marchioness of Winchester, the two 
humorous pieces on Hobson, the carrier, and 
the lines on Shakspere, can be best discussed 
in detail along with " Lycidas." Two of the 
others are sonnets, and will be appropriately 
treated with their fellow-poems in this form. 
We are thus left to take account of only 
four pieces, a complete and a fragmentary 
ode, a song, and an academical exercise — an 
amount of verse that would be unworthy of 
separate treatment but for the fact that it con- 
tains Milton's single ode, one of the supreme 
specimens of its class in our literature. Before 
discussing it, however, we must remember that 
while these eleven Cambridge poems do not 
represent great fecundity, they do represent 
both scope and mastery of genius. The two 
serious elegies are excellent, the lines on Shak- 
spere are noble and indicative of a fine culture, 
and the sonnets are marked by pure, if serious, 
charm. In short, it is a body of verse full of 
promise, as well as evidencing much achieve- 



62 JOHN MILTON 

ment — an achievement sufficient, had he never 
written another Hne, to have preserved Mihon's 
name along with those of Barnfield and other 
minor Elizabethans, though in a somewhat 
higher category. 

The elegy on a "Fair Infant" seems to 
date from Milton's second year at Cambridge, 
1625-26; next in chronological order comes 
the fragmentary "At a Vacation Exercise," 
which dates from 1628, the year before he 
took his Bachelor's degree. He had been ap- 
pointed to deliver a Latin speech at certain 
sportive exercises held by the undergraduates. 
His thesis was the famihar one that all work 
and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but he 
presented it under a much more decorous 
title. He was assisted by other students who 
represented fictitious characters — on this spe- 
cial occasion the " Predicaments " of Aris- 
totle. Milton, in spite of his serious nature, 
managed to play well his part of " Father " 
to the unruly assemblage, hence his speech 
contains jocularities and now unintelligible per- 
sonal allusions. Suddenly he introduced an 
innovation ; he passed from Latin into English, 



WORKS 63 

apostrophizing nobly his native tongue, and 
declaiming solemnly fifty sonorous couplets. 
Much of the poem is dead to us now ; but the 
style cannot die, because it is prophetic of the 
future master. Even the undergraduates bent 
on fun must have stood dumb with pride for 
their brilliant colleague who could thus sing, — 

" Of kings and queens and heroes old, 
Such as the wise Demodocus once told 
In solemn songs at King Alcinous' feast." 

But Milton would not try their patience, for 
he soon called up his " Predicaments," and 
ended with some Hnes about the chief EngHsh 
rivers that long puzzled the critics until it 
was discovered not many years ago that the 
dignified poet was probably punning on the 
names of two young freshmen, sons of a Sir 
John Rivers. 

His next poetic performance, dating from 
Christmas, 1629, must have still more aston- 
ished his fellow-students, if any of them were 
permitted to hear it The famous stanzas en- 
titled ''On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," 
which Hallam has declared to be an ode, 



64 JOHN MILTON 

" perhaps the finest in the English language," 
represent a marked growth of poetic power 
and an exceptional accomplishment for a poet 
just turned twenty-one. He thought enough 
of it to give an excellent description of it to 
his friend Diodati in his sixth Latin elegy ; 
indeed the original hardly anywhere rises 
above two splendid lines of the paraphrase : — 

" Stelliparumque polum, modulantesque aethere turmas 
Et subito elisos ad sua fana deos." ^ 

As we shall see from the fragment on the 
" Passion," Milton was meditating upon the 
great events of the Christian Year and en- 
deavoring to give them poetic expression of 
an adequate kind. He succeeded so well at 
his first attempt that he may almost be said 
to have imposed the thought of his ode and 
himself upon most reading people whenever 
the glad festival comes round. Reverence of 
spirit and noble charm of style had never be- 

1 Loosely rendered by Cowper : — 

" The hymning angels and the herald-star 
That led the Wise, who sought him from afar, 
And idols on their own unhallow'd shore 
Dash'd, at his birth to be revered no more." 



WORKS 65 

fore been so harmonized in an English reli- 
gious poem, nor have they, perhaps, been so 
harmonized since. The poet was rapt away 
on the wings of his imagination, but not car- 
ried so far out of sight as in much of his 
later work ; hence his ode is one of the most 
comprehensible of his poems for the normal 
reader. 

Whether, indeed, it deserves Hallam's high 
praise is another matter. It has action, but 
not the dramatic intensity of Dryden's "Alex- 
ander's Feast"; it has nobility of thought and 
feeling, but not the nobility of the best stanzas 
of Wordsworth's " Ode on the Intimations of 
Immortality." Besides, being a regular ode 
in set stanzas, it did not allow Milton to attain 
the full harmonic effects of the more or less 
irregular ode, in which sound is married to 
sense in a manner unparalleled in any other 
form of lyric. Yet, if it be not the greatest 
English ode, it surely deserves more attention 
than Mark Pattison gave it, not to mention 
the purblind Johnson. There are crudities to 
be discovered in it beyond doubt ; there are 
indications of a slight bending toward the 



66 JOHN MILTON 

Fantastic School of Donne ; but these are 
trifles compared with the charm and power 
that result from the blending of Greek and 
Hebrew elements — with the almost magical 
effects of the skilfully chosen proper names — 
with the pervading dignity of style and the 
individual mastery of rhythm. 

With regard to the last point it will be 
well to go somewhat into particulars. Not 
only is the rhythm of such a stanza as that 
beginning 

" Such music (as 'tis said) " 

masterly and original, but the stanzaic form 
itself is the invention of a metrical artist. Its 
elements are not new, being merely a " tail- 
stave " and a couplet ; but the proportions 
observed by the various lines with respect to 
the number of contained syllables are strike 
ingly unique. The short lines of five or six 
syllables are balanced against lines of ten, 
and when one expects a uniform couplet, one 
is confronted with a line of eight syllables 
rhyming with an Alexandrine of twelve. 
Hence the resulting stanza gives swiftness of 



WORKS 6^ 

movement through its short lines, abundance 
of melody through its frequent rhymes, and 
a stately dignity through its protracted and 
sonorous close. What finer combination of 
melody and harmony could one desire than 
this : — 

" The lonely mountains o'er, 

And the resounding shore, 
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament ; 

From haunted spring, and dale, 

Edged with poplar pale, 
The parting Genius is with sighing sent ; 
With flower-inwoven tresses torn 
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets 

mourn.'" 

The alliteration discoverable here and else- 
where has induced some critics to find the 
ode too artificial, just as the twenty-sixth 
stanza about "the sun in bed," introducing a 
figure more suitable to Donne, or, with a slight 
change, to Butler, has induced them to dis- 
cover a hankering in the young poet after 
the diseased beauties of Marinism ; but these 
are trifles when compared with the splen- 
did rhythmical and metrical triumph of the 



6S JOHN MILTON 

" Hymn " proper, or with the marvellous dic- 
tion exhibited in such verses as 

" And cast the dark foundations deep, 
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep/' 

With regard to the four admirable preliminary 
stanzas, Milton can claim no such metrical origi- 
nality as he can for the stanzas of his "Hymn." 
They are precisely the stanzas used in the 
elegy on the " Fair Infant," and are a mere 
modification of the rhyme-royal of Chaucer, 
the seventh verse containing twelve syllables 
instead of ten, i.e. being an Alexandrine. This 
modification had been consciously or uncon- 
sciously made by Sir Thomas More, in his 
" Lamentation " for Queen Elizabeth, wife of 
Henry VH., but Phineas Fletcher was more 
probably the source that influenced Milton. 
He might easily have developed it for him- 
self, however, since modifications of stanzas 
by the addition of an Alexandrine in imitation 
of Spenser were frequent at the time. But 
such noble use of any sort of stanza as that 
made by Milton was not common then, and 
never has been or will be. 



WORKS 69 

The Easter season of 1630 evidently found 
Milton preparing to emulate his success of 
the preceding Christmas. He began with 
eight introductory stanzas of the same modi- 
fied rhyme-royal form ; but at the end of 
the eighth, before he reached the " Hymn " 
proper, he broke off, appending to the frag- 
ment years later the following note : — 

" This subject the author, finding to be above 
the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing 
satisfied with what was begun, left it unfin- 
ished." 

With this judgment it is easy to agree. 
The stanzas, while not lacking in beauty, are 
not worthy of the transcendent subject. They 
show more markedly than his preceding poems 
the influence of his favorite Spenser, and they 
do not show to the full the splendid original 
powers of which Milton had already given 
such evidence. They mark also the limit of his 
yielding to the fantastic absurdities of Marin- 
ism, for there is little in the poetry of Quarles 
or Sylvester that is more extravagant than 
the monumental '* conceit," in the seventh 
stanza, of ''that sad sepulchral rock," upon 



70 JOHN MILTON 

whose "softened quarry" the poet "would 
score " his " plaining verse as lively as before." 
If the little " Song on May Morning " dates 
from 1630, it more than atones by its beauty 
for the failure of the poem on the "Passion." 
But, as v/e shall see later, there is a tendency 
among critics to assign the undated early 
poems to the period of retirement at Horton ; 
hence the ten beautiful lines may not repre- 
sent the emotions of the college student at 
all. They are full of an exquisite feeling 
for spring, especially for its pulsing energy, 
which is well symbolized by the sudden change 
at the fifth verse from long iambic lines to 
shorter trochaic ones. Why a student like 
Milton, who had celebrated the return of 
spring in Latin elegiacs, might not have writ- 
ten this song after a walk in the beautiful 
gardens of Trinity is hard to see ; but the 
critics seem to write as if Milton's love of 
nature was brought out at Horton alone. Of 
this we shall speak hereafter; it is sufficient 
now to emphasize the beauty of the lines, 
which is more elaborate, however, than befits 
a genuine song. 



CHAPTER II 



THE LATIN POEMS 



As we have seen, the Latin poems formed 
a separate portion of the volume of 1645-46. 
They filled eighty-eight pages, divided by their 
author into two books, one of elegies (" Elegia- 
rum Liber "), and one of miscellanies (" Sylva- 
rum Liber"). In the poem last written, the 
** Epitaphium Damonis," Milton announced his 
intention of writing thenceforward in English, 
a promise which was practically kept, since 
nothing but the "Ode to Rous" and a few 
epigrams were subsequently added to the col- 
lection. Of the seven elegies, eight epigrams, 
and nine miscellaneous pieces (excluding the 
three Greek poems) printed in 1645, twelve 
were written at Cambridge, one apparently at 
Horton, and the rest during or shortly after 
the ItaHan journey. The whole is therefore 
the work of a young man, and a considerable 
71 



72 JOHN MILTON 

portion that of a mere youth. Judged from 
this point of view, it is a wonderful achieve- 
ment. 

With regard to the intrinsic merits of the 
verses, there is almost complete unanimity 
among the most qualified critics. With the 
exception of Landor, who wrote more as a 
Roman, to whom Latin seemed, in the words 
of Dr. Garnett, to come " like the language of 
some prior state of existence, rather remem- 
bered than learned," Milton is the greatest 
EngUsh writer of Latin verse. This may 
seem to be a dubious compliment in an age 
when even the veritable classics are often 
disparaged ; but it would not have been such 
to Milton and his contemporaries, and it must 
mean something in any careful estimate of his 
work. He is the greater man and poet for 
having succeeded so well in his Latin verses, 
even if we believe with Dr. Garnett that he 
won his success by the sweat of his brow — 
a point that does not seem to be irrevocably 
settled. 

Authorities are agreed that Milton always 
attained scholarly elegance, and that he did 



WORKS 73 

not lose his own individuality as is so often 
the case with writers who attempt to use a 
language not native to them. That he suc- 
ceeded in writing great poems is hardly as- 
serted, save with regard to the " Epitaphium 
Damonis," of the nobility and beauty of which 
there has been no serious doubt. Difference 
of opinion has revealed itself as to what author 
Milton followed most closely, Warton, a good 
judge, beheving that he imitated Ovid with 
consistency, Hallam maintaining that his hex- 
ameters at least are more VirgiUan. It is 
safer, perhaps, to side with Warton. It is safe, 
too, to agree with Dr. Johnson and with Dr. 
Garnett that, in the words of the former, neither 
" power of invention " nor " vigor of sentiment " 
are so conspicuous as ** the purity of the 
diction and the harmony of the numbers " ; 
but on this point something needs to be said 
by way of explanation. 

Milton's diction is pure on the whole, but 
it is easy to estabhsh the fact that he uses 
quite a number of ante- and post-classical words ; 
more, seemingly, of the former than of the 
latter. His excessive and sometimes inaccu- 



74 JOHN MILTON 

rate use of "que" is also to be noticed !^ Har- 
monious his verses certainly are when he is 
using the elegiac couplet ; but it may be ques- 
tioned whether vigor is not rather the chief 
characteristic of his hexameters. Again, it is 
a mistake to suppose that there are no remark- 
ably poetic passages to be found outside the 
'' Epitaphium Damonis " and the two elegies 
(i., vi.) to Diodati, as might be inferred from the 
prominence given these poems. Such are to 
be found even outside the lines **Ad Patrem " 
and the tribute to Manso, which some modern 
critics praise. The close of the fourth elegy 
to Thomas Young, Milton's tutor, is full of 
sonorous energy ; there is a fine lift in the early 
verses on the *' Return of Spring " ; and there 
is probably more sheer dramatic power in the 



1 In an interesting letter my friend Professor Charles W. Bain 
of South Carolina College informs me that Ovid seems to have 
had a preponderant influence on Milton's diction, also that the 
latter uses an excess of purely poetic words as well as quite a 
number rendered classical only by a single use on the part of 
Ovid or Virgil. Mr. Bain thinks Milton's versification remark- 
ably good, but his trained ear supports my untrained one in 
finding not a few verses rendered unpleasant by a superfluity of 
elided syllables. 



WORKS 75 

strong hexameters on Guy Fawkes's Day 
("In Quintum Novembris "), written when Mil- 
ton was not quite eighteen, than is to be found 
in the rest of his Latin verse, or indeed in the 
poetry of any other poet of equal age. There 
is strong work, too, in both the academical exer- 
cises included in the " Sylvarum Liber." In 
short, while the Milton of the Latin poems 
is plainly more graceful than subhme, he is just 
as plainly a Milton destined to grow greater 
with the years. 

There is little need in a study hke the present 
to dwell at length on special poems. The ele- 
gies on the Bishops of Ely and Winchester, 
on the Cambridge beadle and vice-chancellor, 
and on Diodati will occupy us in a later chapter. 
None of the epigrams can be called great, or 
even fine, although some are good ; and the 
irregular ode to John Rous, the librarian at 
Oxford, who had lost his copy of the edition 
of the " Minor Poems" of 1645 and desired an- 
other, is interesting chiefly as a metrical ex- 
periment. The two Greek epigrams and the 
paraphrase of Psalm cxiv. are not remarkable, 
and the scazons to the ailing Roman, Giovanni 



^6 JOHN MILTON 

Salzilli, who had praised Milton so extrava- 
gantly, are little more than graceful. But the 
elegies to Diodati — really friendly letters in 
verse — are excellent of their kind, the later 
written being notable for its fine expression 
of that cardinal doctrine of Milton's faith, 
afterward so nobly presented in *' Comus " and 
in a memorable prose passage, — that he who 
would write a true poem must live a pure life. 
The elegy or letter to Young is full of reverent 
affection, and the lines on the advent of spring 
have a distinct charm. The seventh elegy is 
interesting from its somewhat conventional but 
graphic description of the effect upon the young 
poet of a pretty face flashing upon him in a 
London street, but immediately disappearing in 
the crowd. Later, Milton appended some lines 
of apology for his youthful enthusiasm, but 
they were not needed ; the occurrence described 
was evidently a rare one. 

The " Sylvarum Liber " adds more to Milton's 
fame than the technical elegies do. The 
" In Quintum Novembris " is, as we have seen, 
a memorable poem, even if it ends flatly. The 
description of Satan arousing the Pope to send 



WORKS 77 

his emissaries to England is very vivid, and 
ought to be read in Professor Masson's hex- 
ameters, since the gentle Cowper was too 
squeamish to translate it, and the high-church 
Johnson to praise it. The academical exercises, 
especially that on Aristotle's view of Plato's 
philosophy, show how Milton could clothe with 
life even the dry bones of metaphysics, just 
as he afterward clothed those of theology. 
The lines to his father are not only a fine filial 
tribute, but are a splendid autobiographical de- 
fence of the right of genius to careful culture 
and to exemption from all sordid incentives to 
self-exertion. It is as noble a document as can 
be found in the annals of human intercourse, 
and should be studied by all who know Latin. 
Almost as much can be said of the ** Mansus," 
the admirable tribute to that Marquis Manso 
who has the unique distinction, denied even 
to Maecenas, of being the friend of two great 
epic poets of different tongues, Tasso and 
Milton. The aged Neapolitan has his name 
enshrined in Tasso's verses, but he has as sure 
a title to fame in Milton's tribute. The Eng- 
lish reader may indeed bear away from the 



yS JOHN MILTON 

poem a deep regret that Milton never carried 
out his expressed purpose of writing an epic 
on King Arthur, but he will always remem- 
ber with pleasure the hale and hearty friend 
of genius — the Biis dilecte senex. He will 
pass on, too, to read the beautiful description 
of Manso's goblets in the " Epitaphium Damo- 
nis," and having finished the two noble poems, 
he will ever after find it impossible to speak 
of Milton's Latin verses without affection mixed 
with wonder. 



CHAPTER III 

" l'ALLEGRO " AND ** IL PENSEROSO " 

The genesis of **L' Allegro" and "II Pen- 
seroso," perhaps the best known and most 
heartily admired of all Milton's compositions, 
is involved in considerable obscurity. They 
were not printed before 1645, and they do not 
exist for us in the celebrated bound volume of 
Milton's Mss. in the library of Trinity College, 
Cambridge, which contains the drafts of all 
the English poems written between 1633, prob- 
ably, and 1645 5 we are therefore compelled, in 
the absence of other data, to rely upon infer- 
ences and internal evidence in determining 
their time and place of writing. The consen- 
sus of critical opinion gives 1632-33 as the 
time, and Horton as the place. Professor 
Masson assigns them to the latter half of 
1632. There are, however, reasons to make 
one think that they should probably be placed 
earlier. The autumn of 1632 seems to be 
79 



80 JOHN MILTON 

selected because Horton is usually assumed as 
the place of composition, and Milton went to 
reside there in July, 1632. He would natu- 
rally, argue the critics, be so impressed with 
the charms of the spot that he would turn to 
verse, and " L' Allegro " and " II Penseroso," 
and the '' Song on May Morning," which we 
have assigned to the Cambridge period, would 
be the outcome. But there is no proof that 
the poems were not written at Cambridge or 
in London as reminiscential tributes to the 
pleasures of a vacation spent in the country ; 
and we know from a Latin prolusion or ora- 
tion delivered, Masson thinks, either in the 
latter half of 163 1 or the first part of 1632, 
that Milton spent " the last past summer 
. . . amid rural scenes and sequestered 
glades," and that he recalled *'the supreme 
delight he had with the Muses." This vaca- 
tion of 1 63 1 may have been spent at Horton, 
for there is no proof that the elder Milton 
had not then acquired that property, and the 
young poet may have written his poems under 
the elms that so fascinated him, or have com- 
posed them on his return to college. 



WORKS 8 1 

I incline to the former supposition. As we 
shall see, he was unquestionably supplied with 
hints for both his poems by Burton's '* Anat- 
omy," surely a Hkely book for such a student 
as Milton to take with him on a vacation. 
Again, no one can read the ** Prolusion on 
Early Rising," almost certainly Milton's, with- 
out thinking that much of the raw material of 
the two poems was in his brain and being ex- 
pressed during his university Hfe ; nor can 
one read the other prolusions without seeing 
that Orpheus, the music of the spheres, and 
Platonism were much in his thoughts. Be- 
sides, about 1630, the date of the " Epitaph 
on Shakspere," Milton was evidently to some 
extent occupied with his great forerunner, 
whose genius is honored in the poems, and a 
year later he was experimenting with the 
octosyllabic couplet in the *' Epitaph on the 
Marchioness of Winchester." Finally, it was 
about this time that he was seriously weigh- 
ing the reasons pro and con with regard to his 
choice of a profession, and it might naturally 
occur to him to contrast in poetic form the 
pleasures of the more or less worldly and the 



82 JOHN MILTON 

more or less secluded, studious, and devoted 
life. He had made his choice by the autumn 
of 1632, and had therefore less cause for such 
poetical expression. 

A minute analysis of the style and metre of 
the poems tends to confirm the view expressed 
above. It is obviously a transitional style 
when compared with that of the " Nativity 
Ode," and other earlier pieces. Scri ptural 
ideas and subjects are occupying his mind 
less, and he has progressed toward a freer 
handling of his themes. He has become in- 
terested in contemporary English poetry, and 
while showing the influence of the classics, 
is not mastered by them. All this would indi- 
cate that the poems were written after 163 1, 
though, as we have just seen^ is not unlikely 
that having in that year handled the octo- 
syllabic couplet successfully, he should shortly 
be tempted to try it again. We thus have 
163 1 as a terminus a qtto ; 1633-1634, the 
years of "Arcades" and ** Comus," are a ter- 
minus ad quem for the following strictly metri- 
cal reasons. The lyrical portions of ** Arcades" 
and " Comus " appear to be less spontaneous 



WORKS 83 

and more mature than " L' Allegro " and its 
companion poem. The metrical art displayed 
is more elaborate and self-conscious, and when 
one looks closer, as, for example, when one 
compares the invocation to Mirth in *' L'Alle- 
gro " with the similar passage in '' Comus " 
(11. 102-122), one is struck with the fact that 
the verses of the anti-masque have lost the 
blithe sensuousness of the former poem, that 
thought is struggling with feeling, and that 
the lyric style of the poet is approaching its 
culmination in the elaborate and highly sus- 
tained art that has made " Lycidas " matchless. 
We conclude, therefore, that " L' Allegro " and 
'' II Penseroso" are nearer to the "Epitaph on 
the Marchioness of Winchester" than they are 
to "Arcades"; and if any one should argue 
that the mature sentiment of the poems and 
their vigorous expression indicate a later, not 
an earlier, date, it must suffice to reply that 
youth takes itself more seriously than age, and 
that there is no sentiment or thought in either 
poem that Milton might not well have had as 
a student at Cambridge. 

It has been stated already that Milton was 



84 JOHN MILTON 

indebted for hints, if not for direct suggestion, 
to Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy." This 
famous book, the first edition of which ap- 
peared in 1 62 1, was prefaced by a poem en- 
titled "The Author's Abstract of Melancholy, 
AmXo7ft)?," in which " Democritus Junior" 
analyzes his feelings in a way that fore- 
shadows Milton's subsequent procedure. There 
are twelve stanzas of eight lines each, the last 
two verses of each stanza constituting a vari- 
able refrain, the measure being, however, the 
octosyllabic couplet. In one stanza the pleas- 
ures of a meditative man are given in a series 
of little pictures, while the next stanza presents 
the woes of the same personage when a fit of 
real melancholy is upon him. Milton could 
not have failed to be struck with the general 
effectiveness of the idea and its development, 
but his artist's instinct told him that this effec- 
tiveness would be enhanced if, instead of a 
dialogue in stanzas, he should write two dis- 
tinct but companion poems, developed on 
parallel lines, in which the pleasures of a 
typically cheerful and a typically serious man 
should be described in pictures slightly more 



WORKS 85 

elaborate than those of Burton. He aban- 
doned the too glaring contrast of joys and 
woes, and succeeded also in avoiding the occa- 
sional dropping into commonplace that mars 
the "Abstract of Melancholy." But some 
pictures and even lines and phrases of the 
elder poem probably remained in his memory. 
Another poem which may have influenced 
Milton is the song, *' Hence, all you vain de- 
lights," in Fletcher's play, '' The Nice Valour." 
This play was not published until 1647, but it 
had been acted long before, and the song had 
almost certainly become known before *' II 
Penseroso " was written. Tradition assigns 
the lyric to Beaumont, but Mr. BuUen with 
more probability gives it to Fletcher. It is 
an exquisite expansion of the theme expressed 
in its closing verse, " Nothing's so dainty-sweet 
as lovely melancholy," and it is pleasant to 
believe that it may have given Milton a hint, 
although It can scarcely have had as much 
influence upon his verses as his own two 
poems plainly had upon a stanza of Collins's 
"The Passions." There are naturally traces 
of other poets to be found in these produc- 



86 JOHN MILTON 

tions of Milton's impressionable period, par- 
ticularly of Joshua Sylvester, and to a less 
degree of Spenser, Browne, and Marlowe. 
Collins, too, was not the only eighteenth-cen- 
tury poet who had " L' Allegro " and " II Pen- 
seroso " ringing through his head, as any one 
may see who will take the trouble to examine 
Dodsley's well-known collection. Even Pope 
was not above borrowing epithets from them, 
and Dyer's best poem, " Grongar Hill," would 
not have had its being without them. Mat- 
thew Green, Thomas Warton, John Hughes, 
who actually wrote a new conclusion for " II 
Penseroso," and other minor verse-writers were 
much affected by them, and Gray borrowed 
from them with the open boldness that always 
marks the appropriations of a true' poet. But 
perhaps the best proof of their popularity 
during a century which is too sweepingly 
charged with inability to appreciate real 
poetry, is the fact that Handel set them to 
music. In our own century they have never 
lacked admirers, or failed to exert upon poets 
an easily detected influence. It may even be 
held with some show of reason that their 



WORKS 8y 

popularity, leading to a fuller knowledge of 
Milton, paved the way for the remarkable 
renascence of Spenser in the latter half of the 
eighteenth and the first part of the present 
century. 

As their Italian titles imply, the subjects 
or speakers of Milton's verses are The Cheer- 
ful Man and The Thoughtful (Meditative) 
Man respectively. Our English adjectives do 
not quite adequately render the Italian they 
are intended to translate, which is perhaps 
the reason why Milton went abroad for his 
titles, since he had a striking warning before 
him in Burton's "Abstract" of the ambiguity 
attaching to such a word as " melancholy," 
which he might have used with one of his 
poems without exciting surprise. He has ex- 
cited surprise with some modern critics through 
the fact that he wrote Penseroso instead of 
Pensieroso, but it has been seemingly shown 
that the form he used was correct and current 
when he wrote. His Italian titles, however, 
have not prevented much discussion as to the 
characters he intended to portray. Critics 
are quite unanimously of the opinion that II 



88 JOHN MILTON 

Penseroso represents a man very like the 
Milton we know, but they are divided as to 
the kind of man typified by L' Allegro. One 
editor, Mr. Verity, goes so far as to say that 
Milton '* must have felt that the character of 
L' Allegro might, with slight changes or addi- 
tions, be made to typify the careless, pleasure- 
seeking spirit of the Cavaliers and Court; the 
spirit which he afterward figured in Comus 
and his followers, and condemned to destruc- 
tion." If this view be correct, one is forced 
to conclude that Milton had more of the true 
dramatist's power of creating characters other 
than himself than he has generally been sup- 
posed to possess; and it requires us to con- 
ceive the more sprightly poem as forming a 
hard mechanical contrast to its companion, 
which is the reverse of poetical. On the 
other hand. Dr. Garnett maintains that the 
two poems "are complementary rather than 
contrary, and may be, in a sense, regarded as 
one poem, whose theme is the praise of the 
reasonable life." It is easy to agree with 
this view, especially as Burton's poem ob- 
viously suggested the idea of contrasting two 



WORKS 89 

well-marked moods of one individual character, 
rather than that of bringing into juxtaposition 
two radically different characters. L'Allegro 
may not be the Milton who meditated enter- 
ing the Church and making his life a true 
poem, but he is rather the Milton who went 
to the theatre in his youth, and could in his 
mature age ask Lawrence 

" What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, 
Of Attic taste with wine, whence we may rise 
To hear the lute well touched or artful voice 
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? " 

than the typical Cavalier of Charles's court. 
Cavaliers did not usually call for '' sweet Lib- 
erty " but for sweet License, nor did they 
greatly hanker after "unreproved pleasures." 
They were not particularly noted for their 
early rising ; and if any one of them had 
watched the Bear out, in different pursuits 
from those of II Penseroso, he would probably 
not have continued his morning walk after 
encountering the "milk maid singing blithe." 
Another point on which critics differ is, 
whether or not Milton intended to describe 
the events of a day of twenty-four hours. 



90 JOHN MILTON 

Some claim that he merely sketches the gen- 
eral tenor of the life of his characters ; others 
that he represents the events of an ideal day. 
The antagonists ought to be satisfied with the 
assurance that he intended to do both the one 
thing and the other. The careful and sequen- 
tial division of the day that is apparent in each 
poem (even if "II Penseroso " does begin with 
the nightingale and the moon) cannot be acci- 
dental, nor can the grouping of events and natu- 
ral sights belonging to different seasons of the 
year be the result of ignorance or negligence. 
It is, probably, a fad of criticism to call as 
much attention as is now done to the fact that 
Milton was not so accurate or so penetrating 
an observer of nature as some of his succes- 
sors, like Tennyson, have been. In the first 
place, neither here nor in " Paradise Lost " 
will Milton be found to be much of a sinner 
in this regard if he be compared with his 
predecessors and contemporaries. In the sec- 
ond place, it is by no means certain that 
minute and accurate observation of nature is 
essential to the equipment of a great poet. A 
genuine love of nature, a power to feel and 



WORKS 91 

impart something of her spirit, is doubtless 
essential ; but as poetry on its pictorial side 
should be mainly suggestive, it is not yet 
clear that posterity will get more pleasure out 
of the elaborate and accurate pictures of some 
modern poets than out of the broadly true and 
suggestive, if sometimes inaccurate, pictures of 
Milton. It is not entirely unHkely that our 
recently developed love of detail-work has 
injured our sense for form, and that our 
grandchildren will take Matthew Arnold's ad- 
vice and return to the Greeks — and Milton, in 
order to learn what the highest poetry really 
is Hke. Milton is nearer akin to Homer and 
Sophocles than he is to the modern naturalist 
or nature mystic, and it is well for EngUsh 
poetry that he is. He would probably have 
thought the picture of the sunbeams lying in 
the golden chamber, suggested by a few words 
in that exquisite fragment of Mimnermus be- 
ginning '' KlrjTaod ttoXlv/' more in keeping with 
the requirements of a rational poetics than nine- 
tenths of the purple descriptive passages in 
EngUsh poetry since the days of Wordsworth. 
Yet if editors and critics have had their 



92 JOHN MILTON 

humors and fads, they have always ended by 
acknowledging the perennial charm of these 
poems. And the mass of readers has paid its 
highest tribute of culling many a phrase and 
verse for quotation to please the outer or the 
inner ear. The anthologist of our lyric poetry 
who should omit them from his collection would 
pay dearly for his indiscretion, and yet he could 
argue fairly that they are rather idylls than 
true lyrics, as Wordsworth did long since. But 
if they are, in fact, a series of little pictures, 
sometimes so loosely joined or so hastily 
sketched as to puzzle the careful critic,^ these 
have been so fused into one organic whole by 
the delicate, evanescent sentiment that pervades 
each poem that even the purist will be willing 
to admit them to be lyrics of marvellous beauty 
and power, coming from the heart of the poet 
and going straight to the hearts of his readers. 

With Milton's most popular poems it is con- 
venient to group three short pieces that are 
little known. They are those entitled " At a 

1 There are three or four passages in the poems rendered 
very obscure by a looseness of syntax unusual with Milton. See 
" L' Allegro," 11. 45-48, 103-106, and " II Penseroso," 11. 147-150. 



WORKS 93 

Solemn Music," *'0n Time," and "Upon the 
Circumcision." The end of 1633 and the be- 
ginning of 1634 may be assigned as the proba- 
ble period of composition, for reasons that need 
not be detailed here. The first poem seems 
reminiscential of a sacred concert, the second 
was intended as an inscription for a clock-face, 
the third forms, with the " Nativity Ode " and 
the stanzas on "The Passion," a somewhat 
belated member of a religious trilogy. All 
three pieces are very elaborate in style and are 
nearer to " Arcades," " Comus," and " Lycidas " 
than to " L' Allegro " and " II Penseroso." All 
are full of high solemnity and of that mighty 
vision of eternal things that makes " Paradise 
Lost" so supreme in the world's poetry. The 
following lines from the first will illustrate the 
quahty of the trio better than any description : — 

" Where the bright Seraphim in burning row 
Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow, 
And the Cherubic host in thousand quires ' 
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires 
With those just spirits that wear victorious palms, 
Hymns devout and holy songs 
Singing everlastingly." 



94 JOHN MILTON 

Such poetry ought to be better known for its 
intrinsic merits, but students of Milton should 
examine each of the poems carefully on account 
of the light it throws on the progress of Mil- 
ton's metrical art. As Professor Masson has 
observed, they are proof that the poet was at 
this time engaged in making metrical experi- 
ments. The first two are a mixture of couplets 
and quatrains with one displaced rhyme ; the 
last consists of two fourteen-lined stanzas that 
correspond with one another, but are exceed- 
ingly irregular in their internal structure. The 
most important point, however, is that in all 
three there is a combination of short and long 
lines that points forward to ** Lycidas," and 
proves that Milton was varying the metrical 
experiments he had been making from his ear- 
liest youth. As late as " L' Allegro " and " II 
Penseroso," in which he had experimented with 
a combination of trimeters and pentameters as 
a fitting proem for the lighter octosyllabics that 
were to follow, his experiments were mainly, 
if not entirely, along English lines ; after his 
residence at Horton had increased his reading 
of the Italian poets, his verse began to show 



WORKS 95 

their influence, except in " Comus " and " Ar- 
cades," for which he had better models nearer 
home, although even in the former it may be 
perhaps detected. This is, of course, quite a 
technical matter, but it throws light upon Mil- 
ton's bold yet painstaking character as an artist, 
and it may be used as a partial test in determin- 
ing the dates of his unassigned compositions. 



CHAPTER IV 



ARCADES AND " COMUS 



Milton had had some little experience in 
writing masques before he reached in **Comus" 
the supreme success possible in this form of 
composition, and he must have seen and read 
not a few. Although we cannot determine 
the exact date of "Arcades," it is reasonably 
certain that it preceded " Comus," and that 
it may be assigned to 1633. It formed only 
" part of an entertainment presented to the 
Countess Dowager of Derby at Harefield," 
but we may be sure that it was a part as 
important as it was beautiful, and that the 
poet's 'prentice hand was strengthened by 
writing it. He seems to have been induced 
thus to honor a lady whose praises Spenser 
had previously sung by the well-known musi- 
cian, Henry Lawes, to whom he afterward 
dedicated a fine sonnet. Lawes (i 595-1662) 
96 



"WORKS 97 

was the chief English composer of his time, 
and must have known the Milton family for 
some years. His talents won him a position 
at court, and the friendship of the leading 
poets of the time, whose songs he set to music, 
receiving in return their poetical encomiums. 
He probably gained more money, however, 
by furnishing music for the then fashionable 
masques, so we find him collaborating in the 
performance of Shirley's " Triumph of Peace," 
and composing single-handed the music of 
Carew's " Coelum Britannicum." He was also 
music tutor to the children of the Earl and 
Countess of Bridgewater, which seems to ex- 
plain his assumed connection with ''Arcades." 
These children would take part in the proposed 
entertainment to their grandmother, and would 
ask their instructor's help. He, knowing Mil- 
ton well, would apply to him for the necessary 
verses, rather than to professional masque- 
writers, who would probably not care to under- 
take such a slight piece of work. Milton's 
success was so conspicuous that when another 
and more elaborate entertainment was contem- 
plated by the Bridgewater family, Lawes would 



98 JOHN MILTON 

again apply to him for poetical assistance. 
This is a simple, if meagre, account of the way 
the young Puritan poet was enlisted in the 
service of the distinguished Cavalier family, 
for Warton's statement that Milton's father 
was the Earl's tenant at Horton has not been 
substantiated. 

With regard to the poetical merits of 
" Arcades " there can scarcely be two opinions. 
The speech of the Genius of the Wood, in 
heroic couplets, is a triumph of style, and the 
three songs have a Hghtness of touch that is 
rare in Milton's lyric work. The compliments 
that had to be paid the Dowager are turned 
with as much grace as if the Puritan had been 
an Elizabethan of the prime. Indeed Shak- 
spere himself has hardly surpassed the exqui- 
site song beginning 

" O'er the smooth enamelled green," 

while he surely would have praised, though 
he need not have envied, such a divinely har- 
monious passage as the following : — 

" But else in deep of night, when drowsiness 
Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I 



WORKS 99 

To the celestial Sirens' harmony, 

That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, 

And sing to those that hold the vital shears, 

And turn the adamantine spindle round 

On which the fate of Gods and men is wound." 

The occasion of the more elaborate celebra- 
tion that led to the creation of " Comus " was 
the formal entrance of the Earl of Bridgewater 
upon his duties as Lord President of Wales 
in the autumn of 1634, at his official residence, 
Ludlow Castle, in Shropshire. Here there 
was quite a gathering of relatives and friends 
who would naturally think a masque to be 
peculiarly suitable to such a semi-royal func- 
tion, especially as the three eldest children of 
the Earl, Lord Brackley, Mr. Thomas Egerton, 
and Lady Alice Egerton, had already acted 
in similar shows. The great hall of the castle 
would also be a most fitting place for the per- 
formance, and here it probably came off, on 
Michaelmas night (September 29), 1634. 

In order to give time for the setting of the 
songs to music and the training of the per- 
formers, Milton must have been ready with 
his manuscript at least by the beginning of 



lOO JOHN MILTON 

the summer. Lawes probably gave him such 
personal details about the actors and the 
scene of the intended performance as would 
enable him to insert the proper compliments 
and to introduce Sabrina in honor of the river 
Severn. It may possibly be that Milton, like 
the majority of his countrymen, felt that 
Prynne had gone too far in his ** Histriomas- 
tix," and that the young Puritan was not sorry 
to have an opportunity to show that religious 
sincerity has no necessary connection with a 
long face. He may, too, have been glad of 
an occasion to measure his strength with the 
greatest poets of the day ; and, perhaps, he 
may have desired to air his philosophy. But 
this is all mere conjecture. What we know 
for certain is that Lord Brackley performed 
the part of the First Brother, Mr. Thomas 
Egerton of the Second Brother, Lady Alice 
Egerton of the Lady, and Lawes of the Attend- 
ant Spirit. We do not know who took the 
part of Comus, or who composed his rout and 
the company of dancing shepherds,^ but in 

1 In the normal anti-masque the performers were hired 
actors. 



WORKS 10 I 

all probability other children of the Earl and 
his friends or retainers filled the remaining 
parts. We are not even informed how the 
masque was received, or whether Milton saw 
it produced ; but we know that Lawes's friends 
asked for copies, and that to save himself 
trouble he had an edition published in 1637 — 
probably from the acting copy. The name of 
the writer was omitted, the motto prefixed show- 
ing that his consent to publish had been given 
reluctantly. Neither in this nor in the editions 
of 1645 and 1673 was the title '* Comus " em- 
ployed, Milton preferring the simple designa- 
tion — "A Mask." Lawes's edition was prefaced 
by a very complimentary letter " to the author " 
from the famous Provost of Eton, Sir Henry 
Wotton, which shows clearly what judicious 
critics must have thought of Milton and his 
work long before he became famous. In the 
edition of 1673 there was no need of such 
commendation, and the letter was omitted. It 
remains to add that " ComAis" exists in Milton's 
handwriting among the Cambridge Mss., and 
that another copy, known as the Bridgewater 
Ms., is extant, which is supposed to be the 



I02 JOHN MILTON 

acting copy, in Lawes's handwriting. The 
textual variations are not specially important. 
But we have dwelt sufficiently upon the 
external features of " Comus," and must now 
compare it with other productions of its kind. 
To do this thoroughly would require a some- 
what detailed account of the development of 
the masque from its origin, as a spectacular 
feature of an Italian wedding feast, to its 
culmination in the entertainment which Ben 
Jonson, Inigo Jones, Ferrabosco, Thomas Giles, 
and the lords and ladies of the court labored 
to make worthy of the favor of their pedant 
king, James I. — an entertainment which gave 
scope to the amateur actor, the engineer, the 
painter, the sculptor, the architect, the musician, 
the poet — to say nothing of the dancing-master, 
the dressmaker, and the upholsterer. For such 
a sketch we have no space here, nor can we 
give an analysis of a typical masque with which 
the reader might compare " Comus," and thus 
judge of the deviations of the latter from the 
normal form.^ We must therefore content 

1 The reader who is interested may find good accounts of 
the development of the masque in Ward's " History of English 



WORKS 103 

ourselves with the statement that even in such 
an elaborate piece as William Browne's *' Inner 
Temple Masque," which contains some delight- 
ful poetry, the chief emphasis was laid on the 
scenery, the costumes, the dancing, and the 
music, while in "Comus," on the other hand, 
Milton laid as little stress as possible upon 
externals, and concentrated his energy chiefly on 
the literary side of his work. Against Browne's 
329 rhyming verses he gave 1023 lines, a 
large portion of which belonged to the met- 
rical form appropriate to the regular drama 
rather than to the masque — to wit, blank verse. 
These variations have led, as we shall now 
see, to much confusion among the critics as 
to the real nature of " Comus." 

There are, indeed, few poems in literature 
with regard to which critical opinion has been 
more hopelessly mixed, certainly on points of 
detail. Some time since much amusement was 
caused by the statement, afterward contra- 
Dramatic Literature," Symonds's " Shakspere's Predecessors in 
the English Drama," and Masson's •' Life of Milton," vol. i. 
Masson analyzes Shirley's " Triumph of Peace," and I give an 
analysis of Browne's " Inner Temple Masque " in my edition of 
the " L' Allegro," etc. 



104 JOHN MILTON 

dieted, that a professor in a leading university 
had said to his class that for his own part he 
did not think " Comus " was '*in it" compared 
with "The Faithful Shepherdess." One imme- 
diately set against this jaunty dictum Macau- 
lay's well-known opinion that Milton's great 
masque — *' the noblest performance of the 
kind which exists in any language " — *' is as 
far superior to * The Faithful Shepherdess ' as 
'The Faithful Shepherdess' is to the 'Aminta,' 
or the ' Aminta ' to the * Pastor Fido ' ; " and 
those persons who had read the four pastoral 
dramas named felt that for once at least in 
his life Macaulay shone as a critic in com- 
parison with some of his successors. Certainly 
the hypothetical modern critic went far beyond 
even the censorious Dr. Johnson, and his ex- 
travagance confirms the need of an inquiry 
into the reasons for the divergence of critical 
opinions on the subject of ''Comus." 

We must remember at the outset that most 
of the critics, sooner or later, save themselves 
from ridicule by acknowledging the greatness 
of ** Comus " as a whole. Even Dr. Johnson, 
after affirming that the songs contained in the 



WORKS 105 

masque were ** harsh in their diction and not 
very musical in their numbers," was moved to 
say that *' a work more truly poetical is rarely 
found." When a critic who was radically in- 
capacitated for appreciating much that was 
best in Milton could say this of *' Comus," it 
ought not to surprise us to find another Tory 
critic, Mr. Saintsbury, who can appreciate 
Milton, going astray in the opposite direction, 
and declaring that it is in '* Comus " that 
** Milton's poetical power is at its greatest 
height." ''Comus" is so good in parts that 
it is no wonder that Dr. Johnson forgot for 
a moment to be censorious, and Mr. Saints- 
bury to be entirely bizarre. But we are not 
warranted in judging a poem from the political 
and ecclesiastical views of its author, as John- 
son practically did ; or from the supreme 
beauty of certain of its passages, as Mr. 
Saintsbury seems to do. A poem mUvSt be 
judged as a whole, and it is just here that 
the critics have been most likely to go astray 
with regard to "Comus." 

Some have insisted upon viewing it as a 
lyrical drama ; others as an epic drama (what- 



I06 JOHN MILTON 

ever that may be) ; some have called it a 
philosophical poem ; others have been pleased 
to dwell upon its allegorical and satirical con- 
tent. Milton, however, called it a masque; 
and as a masque it must be judged, not as a 
regular drama, or as a poem, strictly so called. 
If now we compare *' Comus " with the masques 
of Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Browne, and others, 
we shall agree with those critics who maintain 
that Milton has surpassed his competitors al- 
most as completely as Shakspere has surpassed 
his rivals in the regular drama. " Comus " is 
by far the greatest English masque. But the 
masque, even in Milton's hands, is not the 
high and perfect work of art that the regular 
drama is in Shakspere' s. It could not be, for 
it was a hybrid form of art, and had the defects 
of its qualities. 

What Milton did was to take a species of 
courtly entertainment, of which, as we have 
seen, dancing, music, painting, architecture, 
and poetry were component parts, and elimi- 
nate, as far as he could, all of its elements 
save poetry. But he was compelled to retain 
enough of the discredited elements to keep 



WORKS 107 

his audience in a good humor, and to pre- 
serve the character of his composition when it 
should be pubHshed. The unity of a true 
work of art was thus unattainable from the 
first ; and there was a dangerous pitfall before 
him at which he was sure to stumble. In 
elaborating his plot and individualizing his 
characters more than was customary with his 
predecessors in masque-writing, and especially 
in making considerable use of a verse form 
characteristic rather of the regular drama than 
of the masque, he was making demands upon 
the interest and attention of his audience (to 
a less extent of his readers) that could not 
reasonably be responded to unless he should 
be able to impart to his masque more of 
dramatic action than even Jonson had been 
wont to introduce into the productions of which 
he was so proud. With less music, scenery, 
and dancing, there must be more action, or 
the characters would merely seem to be making 
long speeches. But, unfortunately, Milton was 
not a dramatic poet. He belonged to what 
Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton has happily de- 
nominated the class of poets *' of relative 



I08 JOHN MILTON 

dramatic vision" — that is, poets who, unHke 
the true dramatist, cannot create characters 
that act and speak as flesh and blood indi- 
viduals, different from their creator and from 
one another. The personality of these quasi- 
dramatists is always present in their characters, 
who seem Hke puppets speaking their creators' 
thoughts. When the quasi-dramatist is great, 
the puppet will, of course, be splendid ; but 
nothing comparable to a living, breathing 
Priam, or Othello, or even a Wife of Bath. 
When now the quasi-dramatist becomes an 
epic poet, like Dante in "The Divine Comedy," 
or Milton in '* Paradise Lost," and tells about 
his characters, the effect is so magnificent that 
it is only when we compare his work with 
the truly dramatic epics of Homer that we 
can see his limitations. But when he casts 
his work into more or less dramatic form, 
when his characters no longer have him to 
tell about them, but must act for themselves, 
their puppet nature becomes only too apparent. 
So it is that in " Comus " Milton is compelled, 
by the nature of his experiment upon the 
masque, to give us characters in action in 



WORKS 109 

order to keep up our interest, and yet by the 
very nature of his genius must content himself 
with offering us noble puppets speaking his 
own lofty sentiments in language fit for a 
god, but no more capable of acting their 
parts like men and women than a troupe of 
marionettes. 

This is what Dr. Johnson saw when he 
faulted " Comus " as a drama. But, say the 
critics with a charming unanimity, ''Comus" 
is a masque and must be judged as a masque ; 
therefore Dr. Johnson has blundered again 
with regard to Milton — let him be anathema ! 
Precisely so. " Comus " must be judged as a 
masque, but this is just what the critics fail to 
do. If they would really compare " Comus " 
with other masques, and stop abusing Dr. 
Johnson, they would see that it is because Mil- 
ton ignored the canons of masque-writing that 
he produced a work of art still more hybrid than 
a masque — a something between a masque 
and a drama which demanded for its complete 
success dramatic qualities that its author could 
not give it. If this be a correct statement of 
the facts in the case, it is no wonder that critics 



no JOHN iMILTON 

have not known just what to say about ** Co- 
mus " as a whole, or that such an admirer of 
Milton as Dr. Garnett can find it in his heart 
to call the Elder Brother a prig. But what are 
we to say of Mr. Saintsbury's extravagant 
statement that the author of ''Paradise Lost" 
reaches in " Comus " his greatest height of 
poetical power ? It is almost as bizarre as Mr. 
Pater's desire to see the Athens of Pisistra- 
tus rather than the Athens of Pericles. 

Yet how are we to explain this anomaly, that 
a masque which is not a true masque surpasses 
all other masques, and has won for its author 
the plaudits of nearly every cultivated reader 
from Sir Henry Wotton's time to our own .'' 
The answer is simple — there is no masque that 
so impresses us by the nobility and beauty of 
its conception or execution. This nobility and 
beauty are so conspicuous in "Comus" as to 
outweigh all technical defects ; besides, we are 
now compelled to judge masques in our closets, 
and are therefore prone to judge them merely 
by the poetry they contain. Perhaps, if we 
could have seen one of Ben Jonson's best 
masques presented at court with all its su- 



WORKS I I I 

perb accessories, we might not have been 
thoroughly disposed to acknowledge the su- 
premacy of ** Comus " as a fashionable enter- 
tainment. But if we had possessed true poetic 
discernment, Hallam's often-quoted remark 
would have applied to us — that only one per- 
formance of "Comus" ought to have been 
sufficient '' to convince any one of taste and 
feeling that a great poet had arisen in Eng- 
land, and one partly formed in a different 
school from his contemporaries." 

Yes, a truly great poet, differing from his 
predecessors and contemporaries, had arisen 
in England. Spenser had sung the praises 
of purity, but never with the masculine vigor 
and grace of Milton. Fletcher had employed 
his exquisite lyrical genius on the same theme, 
but had not struck Milton's clear seraphic note. 
Shakspere had, indeed, embodied perfect pu- 
rity in Ferdinand and Miranda, but he had set 
them apart in an enchanted world. It re- 
mained for Milton, while he was compelled to 
use a similarly remote setting, to press home 
to us, with all the superb resources of ** divine 
philosophy " and equally divine art, the splen- 



112 JOHN MILTON 

did truth that purity of mind and soul and body- 
is to be aimed at and attained in our daily life 
below. " Comus " may be a hybrid form of 
a hybrid species of composition ; but it is none 
the less a supreme masterpiece, because it 
is the noblest tribute to virtue ever paid in 
verse. 

In view of this fact many of the comments 
that have been made upon '' Comus " by editors 
and critics seem to be trivial and impertinent. 
It matters little to any one save Milton's biog- 
rapher, whether in this passage or that the poet 
was satirizing the court or otherwise showing 
his puritanical proclivities. It is always more 
or less interesting, however, to trace a poet's 
indebtedness to his predecessors, and we may 
therefore bring this chapter to a close by briefly 
discussing this point. 

The often-repeated story that the masque 
was founded on an actual adventure that be- 
fell the Lady Alice Egerton and her brothers 
seems to rest on slight foundations, and is rather 
based on *' Comus " than "Comus" on it. Put- 
ting this aside, the main sources about which 
critics are pretty well agreed are George Peek's 



WORKS I I 3 

play, "The Old Wives' Tale," Fletcher's "The 
Faithful Shepherdess," the Circe myth as de- 
tailed in the classical authors and in Spenser 
and his school of poets, and finally, the 
" Comus " of Puteanus and Jonson's masque, 
" Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue." 

With regard to Peek's play, which was 
printed in 1595, there can be little doubt that 
it stimulated Milton's imagination, and gave 
him the actual kernel of his plot. As to 
Fletcher's delightful pastoral comedy, of which 
at least three editions seem to have been pub- 
lished before " Comus " was acted, and which 
had been revived as a court-play in the winter 
of 1633-34, it is certain that Milton was more 
indebted to it than Fletcher was to Tasso and 
Guarini. The motif of the two poems is the 
same, the power of chastity to ward off evils, 
yet here Milton is much more plainly lord of 
his native province than Fletcher is. But the 
effect of Fletcher's exquisite lyrical style as 
seen in the latter portion of " Comus " is what 
most closely connects the two poets. It is 
impossible here to bring out this influence 
clearly, but the reader may be confidently re- 



114 JOHN MILTON 

ferred to the elder poet's work to discover the 
extent and quality of the younger poet's in- 
debtedness. Our author's literary obligations 
with regard to his use of the Circe myth are 
not very definitely traceable. He naturally 
had recourse to the " Odyssey," directly or 
indirectly, for that great poem is the fountain- 
head of romance. Ovid had previously drawn 
from the same source with regard to the 
same subject (''Metamorphoses," lib. xiv.), and 
minute critics have detected in ''Comus" the 
influence of the Roman poet. Still more 
patent, however, is the influence of Spenser 
and the great romantic poets of Italy, who 
sang " of forests and enchantments drear." 
The Circe myth is also the subject of Browne's 
** Inner Temple Masque," and there are sev- 
eral touches in ** Comus " that may possibly be 
traceable to this rival poem.^ 

^ Milton was too young to have seen the masque performed, 
and I do not tind any evidence in the latest edition of Brovi^ne's 
poems that his charming trifle was revived ; still, more than one 
manuscript copy of it was in existence, and Milton is known to 
have been interested in " Britannia's Pastorals." A copy of the 
folio edition of the latter poem in Mr, Huth's library is even 
thought to contain annotations by him. 



WORKS 1 1 5 

It will be remembered that Milton did not 
give his masque the name it now bears ; per- 
haps he was actuated both by modesty and 
by a desire to avoid the confusion of his 
poem with a Latin play entitled " Comus," 
written by a professor at Louvain, Hendrik 
van der Putten, or, as he was known to the 
scholarly world, Erycius Puteanus. This ** ex- 
travaganza in prose and verse," as Masson 
calls it, had been printed in 1608, and an Eng- 
lish edition had appeared at Oxford in 1634. 
I have not been able to see a copy of it, but 
I gather from the editors that it is not unlikely 
that Milton had seen the book and taken a 
few hints from it. Ben Jonson, too, in his 
masque, '' Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue " 
(1619), had introduced Comus as a character, 
but only as "the god of cheer or the Belly." 
Milton could have got little inspiration from 
this " first father of sauce and deviser of 
jelly," whose personal appearance, though re- 
sembling that of our great Comus, was plainly 
derived from the *' Imagines " of the elder 
Philostratus. The Comus of Puteanus is said 
to be " a much subtler embodiment of sensual 



Il6 JOHN MILTON 

hedonism"^ than Jonson's belly-god, but all 
good critics are agreed that Milton's concep- 
tion of the character is essentially his own, 
and that, in the words of his chief biographer, 
" he was bold enough to add a brand-new 
god, no less, to the classic Pantheon, and to 
import him into Britain." But it would seem 
that Puteanus ought at least to have the credit 
for having seen that the shadowy deity of the 
post-classical period could be developed into 
a figure of interest and importance. 

We have now fairly described the extent of 
Milton's indebtedness to other writers, and it 
will be seen that he did no more than almost 
every other great poet has done — he appro- 
priated and bettered. The plagiarist-hunter 
will therefore find little true profit in tracking 
him ; but as this eccentric is usually harmless, 
it may be as well to amuse him by referring 
him not only to Spenser's description of "the 
Maske of Cupid" in the twelfth canto of the 
third book of '' The Faerie Oueene," but also 
to that stanza of the poem (IL, xii., 56) in 

1 See Verity's introduction to his excellent edition of 
" Comus." 



WORKS 117 

which a "comely dame" is represented as hold- 
ing a cup of gold full of sappy liquor whereof 

" She used to give to drinke to each 
Whom passing by she happened to meet 
It was her guise all straungers goodly so to greet." 

When these verses are compared with the 
passage in " Comus " containing the lines, — 

" Offering to every weary traveller 
His orient liquor in a crystal glass 
To quench the drouth of Phoebus," — 

it ought to be as apparent that Spenser is 
the author of '* Comus " as that Bacon is the 
author of the plays attributed to Shakspere. 

But it is time to conclude, even though we 
must forego the pleasure of commenting upon 
particular passages of this exquisite poem. 
The reader who loves poetry will lose nothing 
through our silence, for such an one will need 
no critic to point out to him the abiding love- 
liness and beauty of the purest of English 
poems. '* Comus " is great in the purity and 
beauty of its sentiments, in the depth and 
range of its underlying philosophy, in the 
nobility of its diction, and the fluidity of its 



Il8 JOHN MILTON 

rhythmical movement. It is not great struc- 
turally, and could not have maintained the 
grand style at its height; but this is only an- 
other way of saying that in 1634 Milton could 
not have written " Paradise Lost." The im- 
perfect of a higher species may, however, be 
worth much more to us than the perfect of 
a lower species. Gray's " Elegy " is more 
perfect as a work of art than **Comus," and 
is beautiful in itself, but Milton's masque ob- 
viously represents a far higher poetical achieve- 
ment. 



CHAPTER V 

THE ELEGIAC POEMS 

While Milton as the author of " Lycidas " 
and the " Epitaphium Damonis " is assuredly 
the greatest English elegist, it does not follow 
that he is the most typical. That honor is 
reserved for Gray. Milton seldom or never 
fails to lay the tender and melodious flute 
aside for a moment to give us more inspiring 
strains upon the trumpet or the lyre. This 
fact has given some purists occasion for inept 
criticism — especially with regard to " Lycidas." 
They seem to think that because the strictly 
elegiac note of lament {querimonia) is not kept 
throughout, the poem ceases to be harmonious, 
and hence to be a work of art. They forget 
that there is such a thing as fusion of diverse 
elements in art as well as in chemistry. A me- 
chanical mixture of inharmonious elements will 
certainly not produce a work of art ; a mechan- 
119 



I20 JOHN MILTON 

ical mixture of merely diverse but not neces- 
sarily inharmonious elements will certainly de- 
tract from, if not completely mar, a work of art. 
But a fusion of such diverse elements may, 
under favorable circumstances, produce a new 
form of artistic product, or modify an old and 
well-known form. The idyllists of Alexandria, 
while preserving the metre and some other 
features of the older and the newer epic, 
nevertheless, by the fusion of new elements, 
produced a separate and distinct form of poetry. 
The fusion of this form, the idyll, with the 
elegy, modified the older form, and produced 
what we know as the pastoral elegy. Whether 
now Milton was able to modify this last form 
and still preserve its artistic qualities and 
nature, is a question that must be discussed 
when we consider " Lycidas." 

As we have seen, Milton's first elegiac was 
almost his first poetic effort. In the autumn of 
1626, when he was not quite eighteen, his sister, 
Mrs. Anne Phillips, lost her first child, a daugh- 
ter, and the young collegian lamented the event 
in the well-known poem, " On the Death of a 
Fair Infant, dying of a Cough." If it were 



WORKS 1 2 1 

not for the fact that such contentions are 
always unnecessary, because always incapable 
of settlement, one might well maintain that 
this is the most remarkable poem ever written 
by a boy of equal age. It seems to be even 
better than Lamb's famous and admirable lines 
** On an Infant dying as soon as born," and it 
is certainly better than Lovelace's " Elegy " 
on the Princess Katherine, " born, christened, 
buried in one day" — with both of which 
poems one naturally compares it. If it has 
not the subtle tenderness of Lamb's lines, it 
has a dignity and elevation worthy of the Mil- 
ton of riper years. This elevation warrants 
certain writers in treating the poem as an 
ode. It is, indeed, an elegiac ode, complete in 
eleven of those modified rhyme-royal stanzas 
that have bee-n already described, and it is 
one of the best English poems of its kind, 
although manifestly inferior to Dryden's master- 
piece m the same class of composition, the 
splendid and imperishable " Ode to the Mem- 
ory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew." 

As has just been intimated, it is not difficult 
to trace in this youthful poem qualities that 



122 JOHN MILTON 

were never to be absent from Milton's work. 
There is the wonderful mastery of language 
and rhythm, the high seriousness, the free and 
unpedantic use of classical allusion, that have 
distinguished Milton as an artist from all other 
EngHsh poets. There is, it is true, as in most 
of the early poems, a marked leaning toward 
the Fantastic School, yet there is so much 
stateliness of manner that the extravagances are 
overlooked. But a quotation or two will ob- 
viate the necessity for further comment : — 

"O fairest flower, no sooner blown but blasted, 
Soft silken primrose fading timelessly" — 

are verses that any poet, even the greatest, 
might be proud to call his own. The eleva- 
tion proper to the ode form, appears plainly 
in the following stanza, the fourth : — 

"Yet art thou not inglorious in thy fate; 
For so Apollo, with unweeting hand, 
Whilom did slay his dearly-loved mate, 
Young Hyacinth born on Eurotas^ strand. 
Young Hyacinth the pride of Spartan land ; 
But then transformed him to a purple flower ; 
Alack ! that so to change thee Winter had no 
power." 



WORKS 123 

Certainly there was no other poet living in 
Jacobean England save Ben Jonson who could 
have paralleled this stanza, nor in the quarter 
of a century to follow was there to be one 
capable of equalling it, although it was to be 
a period of considerable activity in the com- 
position of elegiac verse. Perhaps, however, 
an exception to this statement must be made 
in favor of the eight immortal lines in which 
the great Marquis of Montrose poured forth 
the passion and the anguish of his soul at the 
execution of his royal master. 

But Milton was soon to use his elegiac 
powers to better purpose than in this poem, 
or in the Latin elegies that will be discussed 
later. In 1630 he composed his splendid epi- 
taph on Shakspere, thus fairly measuring his 
strength against Ben Jonson in the latter's 
strongest point. Although it hardly seems 
that the epitaph on ** the admirable dramatic 
poet," which was published anonymously in 
the Second Folio of 1632, is equal in human 
appropriateness and in perfection of workman- 
ship to the best of Jonson's epitaphs, such as 
that on Philip Gray, or that it is as important 



124 JOHN MILTON 

as a tribute to Shakspere's greatness as Jon- 
son's famous memcrial lines, still no one will 
deny that it is worthy to rank among the great- 
est of epitaphs and the greatest of tributes. 
It would be difficult to point out any verses of 
Dryden or Pope that excel in epigrammatic 
terseness and strength the closing couplet : — 

" And so sepiilchered in such pomp dost lie, 
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die." 

About this time Milton wrote his humorous 
elegies on the death of Hobson, the Cambridge 
carrier, the well-known original of the expres- 
sion *' Hobson's choice." It is not easy to 
associate with Milton the idea of humor, at 
least of the fantastic sort displayed in these 
poems. But they do contain humor, although 
of a not very volatile kind. They are better 
than the somewhat similar verses written by 
Bishop Corbet on the manciple and butler of 
Christ Church, Oxford ; but they are certainly 
not equal to Robert Fergusson's delightful elegy 
on John Hogg, porter to the University of St. 
Andrews. 

In 163 1 the young poet wrote an epitaph, 



WORKS 125 

long enough to be an elegy, on the Mar- 
chioness of Wmchester, who had been lamented 
by Jonson and others, and whose husband was 
to have the honor of an epitaph by Dryden. 
Singularly enough, as in the case of Chaucer 
and the Duchess of Lancaster, the poet was 
of exactly the same age as the subject of his 
verses — twenty-three. The epitaph, which is 
seventy-four verses long, is in that blending of 
seven- and eight-syllabled couplets which Mil- 
ton borrowed from the Elizabethans like Barn- 
field, but of which he is so great a master. 
It is in many respects a true epitaph in spite 
of its length, and it has some of the charac- 
teristics of a requiem. As in the case of many 
other epitaphs of the period, the fact that the 
lady died in childbirth is given a prominence 
that seems unnecessary to our modern notions; 
but at least the poem is practically unmarred 
by conceits, although it is a typical product 
of the Cavalier muse of Milton's earlier years. 
The Puritan that was to be is foreshadowed, 
but only foreshadowed, in the exquisite com- 
parison with Jacob's wife Rachel, and the 
classical touch is, of course, present also. 



126 JOHN MILTON 

There is little in English poetry that marks 
a higher reach than the concluding verses ; 
and the elegy as a whole, with all due regard 
to Mr. Swinburne's contrary opinion, is dis- 
tinctly superior to Ben Jonson's lines upon 
the same lady. 

Six years later, after the retirement at 
Horton had produced "Comus," Milton com- 
posed the crowning poem of his youth, the 
pastoral elegy ** Lycidas." 

The external facts relating to its evolution 
are ample on the whole, and easy to set forth. 
Among his friends at Christ's College had 
been two sons of Sir John King, long Secre- 
tary for Ireland. They were admitted during 
his third year, Roger, the elder, being sixteen, 
and his brother Edward two years younger. 
Nothing seems to be heard of them until four 
years later, when, to the surprise of every one, 
Edward King was chosen a Fellow of the 
College, in obedience to a royal mandate, 
which had doubtless been obtained through 
considerable political influence. Such royal 
interference was not usual or palatable, and 
it must have been especially galHng to Milton, 



WORKS 127 

who, as a Bachelor of two years' standing and 
" an acknowledged ornament of his college," 
to quote Professor Masson, had good reason 
to expect that the honor would have fallen to 
him. He seems, however, to have taken his 
disappointment gracefully, and to have shared 
the general liking for his brilliant and amiable 
college-mate, who, thanks to the pen of his 
disappointed rival, now lives in our memories 
even more freshly than his two greater fellow- 
students, John Cleveland, the Royalist poet, 
and Henry More, the Platonist After Milton 
left Cambridge, King continued his academic 
career in an orthodox and successful way, 
proceeding M.A. in 1633, and filling the 
offices of tutor and praelector while preparing 
himself for active work in the Church. Dur- 
ing the vacation of 1637, however, he sailed 
from Chester for Ireland, where he had been 
born and where he had relations and friends 
of high social standing. On the loth of 
August his ship struck on a rock off the 
Welsh coast, and went down. Accounts vary 
as to the cause of the accident, and it is not 
known how many, if any, were saved. The 



128 JOHN MILTON 

memorial volume shortly to be described states 
that he died in the act of prayer, which would 
imply that some of the passengers and crew 
escaped, but may be merely a touch of 
imagination. 

When the news of King's death was re- 
ceived at Cambridge, it was at once felt that 
special steps should be taken to do honor to his 
memory, and at that time this laudable desire 
could be accomplished in no fitter way than 
by the pubHcation of a volume of elegies in- 
scribed with his name. The collection, when 
it finally appeared from the University Press, 
consisted of two parts, separately paged and 
titled, both bearing the date 1638. The first 
portion consisted of twenty-three poems in 
Greek and Latin, filling thirty-six pages. Both 
the learned languages figured in the title, 
which ran, Jiista Edovardo King natifrago ab 
amicis moerentibiis , amoris et /Lti^eta? %a/3tz^, or, 
as Masson once translated it, ** Obsequies to 
Edward King, drowned by shipwreck, in token 
of love and remembrance, by his sorrowing 
friends " — which is only grammatically am- 
biguous. The second part consisted of thir- 



WORKS 129 

teen English poems, filling twenty-five pages, 
and was entitled " Obsequies to the Memorie 
of Mr. Edward King, Anno Dom. 1638." Of 
the contributors we need note only Henry 
More, who naturally wrote in Greek; Henry 
King, Edward's brother ; Joseph Beaumont, 
afterward author of a curious poem called 
"Psyche"; and John Cleveland, who subse- 
quently showed his powers as an elegist when 
Charles I. was his subject, but here fell little 
short of the climax of absurdity. 

*' Lycidas " was, of course, included in Milton's 
1645 edition of his poems, and the short prose 
argument which now precedes the verses was 
then inserted. No changes save orthographical 
were made in the edition of 1673 ; the version 
of 1645 is, therefore, the final form its author 
gave to his lyrical masterpiece. A comparison 
of the Cambridge Ms., the edition of 1638, and 
a copy of this edition, with corrections in Mil- 
ton's handwriting, still preserved in the Uni- 
versity Library at Cambridge, has enabled 
critics to trace the evolution of certain passages 
of the poem, and thrown much light upon 
Milton's habits of composition. Such investi- 

K 



130 JOHN MILTON 

gation furnishes technical proof of what every 
capable critic would have surmised, that the 
poet was a meticulous artist, careful of word 
and phrase, and sure to better whatever he 
changed. 

But it is time to consider " Lycidas " in its 
higher relations as a contribution to the world's 
small stock of supremely excellent poetry, and 
first of the artistic category to which it belongs. 
Milton himself termed it a "monody," which 
it is, save in the last eight lines ; but we cannot 
read far in it without discovering that it is 
a pastoral poem as well. We are, therefore, 
induced to class it as a pastoral elegy, and to 
rank it with the famous elegiac idylls of Theoc- 
ritus, Bion, Moschus, and Virgil, to say noth- 
ing of their modern imitators. Perhaps Milton 
was induced to give his elegy this form through 
the influence of Spenser, who had thus lamented 
the death of Sidney ; but it is more Hkely that 
he was affected by the example of the great 
Alexandrian poets. As the pastoral is now an 
out-worn form of verse, it follows that " Lyci- 
das " has been pronounced to be artificial and 
insincere. Dr. Johnson being the most stento- 



WORKS 131 

rian exponent of this view ; it will therefore be 
necessary for us to vindicate the fitness of the 
form Milton chose for his tribute, before we 
can proceed with our discussion of the poem 
itself. 

That pastoral poetry is more or less artificial 
in character does not admit of doubt. The 
goatherds of Theocritus were, indeed, to some 
extent worthy of the exquisite poetry put in 
their mouths, and Theocritus himself may be 
regarded as naturalistic in comparison with his 
followers. But that the Roman and the mod- 
ern European pastoral is to any appreciable 
extent naturalistic, is a position that only a very 
rash critic will assume. It does not follow, 
however, that pastoral poetry, because it is arti- 
ficial and not naturalistic, is therefore to be 
tabooed as a form of art. All art has its con- 
ventions, and those of pastoral poetry are ex- 
ceptional in degree rather than in kind. It is 
a convention when the dramatist makes his 
hero soliloquize in blank verse and in tragic 
vein — it is equally a convention when the 
pastoral elegist forgets his sheep and proceeds 
to bewail in tender elegiacs his mate who has 



132 JOHN MILTON 

passed to Proserpina's dark abode. But to 
preserve the well-recognized conventions of 
pastoral poetry, and at the same time refrain 
from stirring the reader's sense of the incon- 
gruous and the ridiculous, or from overtaxing 
his imagination and his sympathy by excessive 
artificiality, is an achievement that few poets 
have attained to. Yet that there have been 
successful pastoral poets and great pastoral 
poems is plain to any student of our literature 
who recalls the names of Spenser and Fletcher, 
and the titles ** Lycidas " and "Thyrsis." 

With regard now to the effect of the arti- 
ficiality or conventionality of this class of poetry 
on the sincerity of the poet when he applies 
it to the expression of his personal sorrow, 
it is easy to see that a mediocre poet would 
either fail to write a true pastoral or else fail 
to show one spark of true feeling. A glance 
through the volumes of Chalmers will bring 
to light a number of frigid performances that 
will prove the truth of this assertion. But it 
often happens that a real poet succeeds best 
when the difficulties of his art-form are greatest. 
Hence it is that three of the finest of English 



WORKS 133 

elegies, " Lycidas," " Adonais," and " Thyrsis," 
are pastoral elegies. Nor will this seem curious 
when we remember that the restrained grief 
at the death of a dear relative or friend, which 
is due to the conventionalities of society, is 
often far more impressive than the wild and 
unrestrained grief indulged in on similar oc- 
casions by mourners in the lower ranks of 
life. If, however, any one is still in doubt 
on this point, let him compare with " Lycidas " 
two simple, i.e. non-pastoral, elegies written 
on friends drowned at sea — to wit, George 
Turberville's " Epitaph on Maister Arthur 
Brooke," and Propertius's elegy on Paetus. 
Making all allowances for Milton's greater 
genius, we can hardly fail to perceive the 
superiority of the more complex over the more 
simple form of lament. 

But the critics frequently shift their point of 
attack from the capabihties of the pastoral 
form to express emotion to the sincerity of the 
grief felt by Milton himself. '' Lycidas," they 
say, lacks sincerity, and hence fails to make a 
true appeal, because it has not and could not 
have had the note of personal sorrow that is 



134 JOHN MILTON 

found in such a poem as " In Memoriam." 
Arthur Hallam was Tennyson's bosom friend ; 
Edward King had been promoted over Milton's 
head at college, and the latter did not even men- 
tion the sad drowning in the Irish Sea in two 
contemporary familiar letters to Diodati. But 
surely one does not need to be intimate with a 
man in order to be sincere in mourning his pre- 
mature taking-off. Milton knew of King well 
enough, and he was aware that the latter was 
just the kind of man that was needed for the 
ministry of the Church. " Lycidas " itself is 
proof sufficient of the interest Milton took in 
that ministry, and of the scorn he had for its 
unworthy representatives; the poem is equal 
proof of the sincere grief its author felt for 
the loss of one whom he had known and ad- 
mired, and whom he had believed destined to do 
a great work within the Christian fold. There 
was therefore in the relations of the two men 
scope for personal emotion of a high and pure 
kind, and this emotion was fused by Milton's 
artistic skill into a poem which, after a wide 
course of reading in the class of poetry to 
which it belongs, I have little hesitation in pro- 



WORKS 135 

nouncing to be the noblest elegy in any of the 
greater literatures. If it is not sincere, then I 
am at a complete loss to account for the true 
ring of such supremely flawless verses as — 

" For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, 
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer," 



or 



or 



or 



" But, oh ! the heavy change now thou art gone, 
Now thou art gone and never must return," 

" Ay me I I fondly dream 
* Had ye been there,' . . . for what could that have 
done?" 

" It was that fatal and perfidious bark, 
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, 
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine, " 



or, finally, the whole passage beginning 

"Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas 
Wash far away " 

and ending 

"And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth." 

It may be, indeed, merely my own imagina- 
tion that discovers in these verses a note of 
personal sorrow. Read casually they perhaps 



136 JOHN MILTON 

Strike one as being beautiful only, but read and 
re-read, and studied word by word, they reveal 
that deep, underlying sincerity that must be the 
basis of all perfect art. Grief worked up for 
the occasion, or the general concern one feels 
at hearing of the death of a brilliant college- 
mate, never inspired such verses or such a 
poem. I could as soon be persuaded that 
Shakspere did not, partially at least, " unlock 
his heart " in his divine sonnets as that Milton 
did not unlock his heart in the equally flawless 
and divine verses I have just quoted. Flawless 
art, I repeat, presupposes the deepest sincerity, 
and I am bold enough or eccentric enough to 
maintain that there are verses in " Lycidas " in 
which Milton has, consciously or unconsciously, 
struck as deep a note of personal sorrow as has 
ever been struck by an English poet. One can 
naturally no more prove such an assertion 
than one can prove that the late Professor 
Minto was mistaken in his theory that the sec- 
ond series of Shakspere's '* Sonnets " repre- 
sents a sort of satiric fancy rather than a 
genuine passion for a fascinating woman. All 
one can say is, that if flawless art " plays such 



WORKS 137 

fantastic tricks before high heaven," it is in- 
deed enough to make the angels weep. 

Turning now to the question of the particu- 
lar poems that may have influenced Milton 
in writing " Lycidas," we must give the first 
place to the three great pastoral elegies of 
the Alexandrians — to the "Song of Daphnis " 
in the First Idyll of Theocritus, to the " Song 
of Adonis " of Bion, and the '* Lament for 
Bion " by Moschus. To these should be added 
the Fifth and Tenth Eclogues of Virgil. 

I cannot see that Propertius's beautiful elegy 
on Paetus or Ovid's on Tibullus was at all in 
Milton's mind. Critics have cited such modern 
pastorals as the ''Alcon" of the Italian poet 
Castiglione as having been drawn on for 
imagery, but I can discover nothing that both 
poets could not easily have derived from their 
common sources of inspiration. This seems 
to be true of Marot's pastoral on the death 
of Louise of Savoy, and of the eclogue that 
Spenser modelled on it. The latter poet's 
" Astrophel " may have had a slight stylistic 
influence ; but even this much can hardly be 
said of Ludovick Bryskett's poor pastoral on 



138 JOHN MILTON 

Sidney, in spite, as we shall see presently, of 
the claims put forward for it by Dr. Guest. 
Nor can I think that the pretty elegies and 
dirges of William Browne of Tavistock were 
specially in Milton's mind when he wrote, 
although more than one critic has traced the 
influence of Browne. It is true that Milton 
was a reader of Browne, and it is also true 
that Browne lamented in a touching way the 
death of a drowned friend ; but these facts do 
not prove conscious imitation. Turberville's 
epitaph on Arthur Brooke, the translator of 
'' Romeo and Juliet," who perished by ship- 
wreck in a way that reminds one strikingly of 
the death of King, has, in spite of a certain 
crudity, more in common with " Lycidas " than 
Browne's laments have. The stanza with the 
pathetic invocation to Arion's dolphin brings up 
immediately one of the finest lines in " Lycidas," 
but it would be rash to affirm that the stanza 
gave birth to the line. In short, it is easy to 
conclude that " Lycidas " is unique among mod- 
ern elegies, whether preceding or following ; for 
it would be hard to trace any marked influence 
exerted by it on " Adonais " or '' Thyrsis." 



WORKS 1 39 

But while we can easily dismiss Milton's 
relations to modern pastoral poets, we should 
say a word here about the way he treated his 
Alexandrian masters. In the first place, he 
followed Virgil in dropping the refrain. Sec- 
ondly, he made little or no attempt in " Lyci- 
das " to paint any of those pretty but elaborate 
little pictures that gave idyllic poetry its name. 
For the beautiful invocation to the nymphs 
(11. 50-62) he was indebted to Theocritus rather 
than to Virgil's Tenth Eclogue ; but his sub- 
stitution of British for classical names was a 
proof at once of his patriotism and of his 
invariable habit and power of bettering what 
he condescended to borrow. UnUke Moschus, 
he saw no reason to reserve to the last the 
expression of his personal sorrow, and it is 
needless to say that the hopelessness of the 
Greek in the presence of death found no place 
in his verses. 

The influence of his classical models on par- 
ticular lines and phrases of " Lycidas " is too 
apparent to require much notice. The name 
'' Lycidas " itself and those of Damoetas, 
Amaryllis, and Neaera are, of course, borrowed 



140 JOHN MILTON 

from these sources. The references to the 
hyacinth " inscribed with woe," to the grief of 
the flowers for Lycidas's death, to the mourn- 
ful echoes of the caves, all suggest the Alex- 
andrian idylls; and Milton himself confesses 
the source of much of his inspiration by his in- 
vocation to " fountain Arethuse " and *' smooth- 
sliding Mincius," and by his expression " Doric 
lay." Minute commentators have even shown 
that he has been misled into making the 
Hebrus a swift river through his reliance upon 
a phrase in Virgil which is supposed to be 
a misreading. But ** Lycidas " has a beauty 
and passion unknown to its Alexandrian pre- 
decessors, and it has not a touch of their 
oriental effeminacy and licentiousness. 

Something must now be said about the 
marvellous rhythm of the poem. The iambic 
pentameter is the prevailing line, but trimeters 
and tetrameters are irregularly introduced 
throughout with exquisite effect. The rhythm 
is varied, and flows now in leaping waves, now 
in long rolling billows that carry all before 
them, like the surging periods of *' Paradise 
Lost." There is probably no short poem in the 



WORKS 141 

language the rhythm of which has been more 
deservedly praised and studied, or more de- 
spaired of by other poets. Milton's mastery 
of rhythm, remarkable from the first, almost 
culminated in " Lycidas," in spite of the 
fact that he was there subjected (practically 
for the last time) to what he afterward called 
•* the troublesome and modern bondage of 
riming." There is nothing in the unrhymed 
(or rhymed) portions of " Comus " that, to my 
ear, at all equals in majesty and splendor of 
rhythmical movement the passage in ''Lycidas" 
that begins 

" Ay me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas " — 

and perhaps there is nothing in '* Paradise 
Lost " that excels it. But it is the rhymed 
structure of ''Lycidas" that has attracted most 
attention, because it is almost unique. Three 
of its notable peculiarities may be pointed out. 
In the 193 verses there are 10 that have no 
rhyming relations with others in their vicinity. 
There is no fixed order of rhyme, and where, 
as often happens, two adjacent verses rhyme, 
they sometimes fail to form a couplet in the 



142 JOHN MILTON 

Strict sense of the word. There is a paucity 
of rhymed endings (only about 60 in the 
poem) which shows that one sound and its 
related rhymes do duty for several verses ; 
e.g. 11. 2, 5, 6, 9, 12, 14, end respectively with 
*'sere," "year," "dear," "peer," "bier," and 
"tear." Other peculiarities, such as the use 
of assonance, might be dwelt upon, but the 
reader may observe these for himself, for the 
main question that concerns us here is, How 
did these peculiarities originate .-^ This ques- 
tion was long ago indirectly answered by Dr. 
Johnson, when, in the course of his famous 
" Life," he casually remarked on the fact that 
Milton's " mixture of longer and shorter verses, 
according to the rules of Tuscan poetry," 
proved his " acquaintance with the Italian 
writers." Later Dr. Guest tried to show that 
an irregularly rhymed pastoral by Ludovick 
Bryskett on the death of Sidney (which made 
no use of verses w^ithout rhyme or of varying 
length) had been in Milton's mind when he 
wrote " Lycidas " ; but that our great poet 
was influenced by the Italian masters, both in 
his arrangement of rhymes and in his alterna- 



WORKS 143 

tion of shorter and longer verses, will be ap- 
parent to any one who will take the trouble to 
analyze the choruses of the *'Aminta" or *' II 
Pastor Fido," or to examine a treatise on Ital- 
ian metres.^ 

The reader will already have gathered that 
there has been much difference of opinion 
with regard to the merits of " Lycidas." Dr. 
Johnson wound up his curiously inept criticism 
by remarking : " Surely no man could have 
fancied that he read ' Lycidas ' with pleasure 
had he not known the author." The cold and 
judicious Hallam wrote on the other hand: 
''It has been said, I think very fairly, that 
'Lycidas' is a good test of real feeling for 
what is peculiarly called poetry." ^ Mark 
Pattison practically regarded " Lycidas " as 
the greatest poem in the language. Dr. Gar- 
nett dissents from this view, holding that the 

1 Mr. Verity notes that Landor also saw Milton's metrical 
obligations to Tasso and Guarini, and refers to the English 
critic's collected works (1876), iv., 499. 

2 " I have been reading ' Comus ' and ' Lycidas ' with won- 
der, and a sort of awe. Tennyson once said that ' Lycidas ' 
was a touchstone of poetic taste." — Edward Fn zGerald to 
Fanny Kemble, March 26, 1880. 



144 JOHN MILTON 

beauties of the poem are exquisite rather than 
magnificent, and that as an elegy it has been 
surpassed by "Adonais." It seems hard to 
justify this criticism. Both poems contain 
exquisite passages, and both contain magnifi- 
cent passages, but I know of nothing in 
" Adonais " that is so exquisite as the flower 
passage in " Lycidas," or so magnificent as the 
speech of St. Peter, or the picture of the 
corpse of Lycidas washed by " the shores 
and sounding seas." Then, again, it seems 
plain that Milton understood better than Shel- 
ley the nature of the art form in which they 
purposed to cast their thoughts. Shelley's 
mind was too hazy to enable him to reproduce 
the pellucid beauty of his Greek originals, and 
his personifications, though not wanting in 
power, were far from clear-cut. This is not 
saying, of course, that the ''Adonais" is not 
a great poem, or that it has not a greater his- 
torical interest than " Lycidas," and after all 
any literature may well be proud of possess- 
ing two such elegies. 

The mention of the speech of St. Peter re- 
minds us, however, that it and the other 



WORKS 145 

** higher mood " concerned with Apollo and 
true fame have given the critics much trouble 
because they do not seem to be in keeping with 
the plaintive tone of the normal elegy. 

The question therefore arises — " Was Milton 
necessarily committing an artistic blunder when 
he introduced into his pastoral elegy ele- 
ments that at first sight seem foreign to it ? " 
This question had practically been answered 
long before by Virgil and those of his succes- 
sors who had used the pastoral for political and 
other similar purposes, but we may answer it for 
ourselves after a brief discussion of the two 
passages in " Lycidas " that have excited so 
much animadversion. 

With the first, beginning 

" Alas ! what boots it with uncessant care," 

less fault has been found. The transition is not 
too abrupt, and the nobility and beauty of the 
verses would almost justify their insertion, even 
if they did not follow naturally on the mention 
of Orpheus — the son of the muse — who per- 
ished at the hands of the ignoble throng. They 
are not, it is true, the soft complaints of a courtly 

L 



146 JOHN MILTON 

lover masquerading as a shepherd, nor are they 
the exquisite wail of a ]'a.^^^, fiji-dc-siecle ballad- 
ist who has retired from the world to lament 
in disgust the interest men take in everything 
except his fragile poetry. They are rather the 
last deep sigh that Milton's noble bosom will 
permit itself before, in the consciousness of 
a high and pure purpose, it is bared to the 
assaults of an alien and pitiless world. But to 
ask that an elegist shall not sigh so deeply 
is Hke insisting that no greater poet than 
a Tibullus shall ever touch the elegiac flute, 
and proclaiming that there is no room in our 
poetic hierarchy for a Propertius. 

It is the second exalted passage introducing 
St. Peter mourning over the degeneracy of the 
English Church that has caused our solicitous 
critics most pain. The introduction of Triton, 
the message of ^olus, even the episode of the 
river Cam were allowable enough in such a 
pastoral ; but why, ask the critics, should the 
bucolic poet turn preacher.? Why should he 
blend with his shepherd's pipe the trumpet of 
the prophet, even though he blow it with the 
might of an archangel 1 Perhaps the fact that 



WORKS 147 

Milton himself saw no incongruity in his pro- 
cedure will seem a sufficient answer to those 
of us w^ho believe that what Shakspere or 
Milton have joined together no man should 
hghtly put asunder. But objectors will not be 
satisfied with this ; so we may tell them that 
by his infusion of passion and scorn Milton, 
like Shelley in " Adonais," has given an inten- 
sity of tone to his elegy which even Moschus 
failed to give to his heartfelt lament for Bion. 
He has given it a higher spiritual significance 
than Propertius, with all his sincerity and 
power, could give to his lines on Paetus. He 
has broken loose from the restraints of the 
pastoral form just where one direct passionate 
outburst was needed to give the proper contrast, 
and so to heighten the effect, just as the single 
sigh or groan that escapes from a strong, self- 
contained mourner is supreme in its effect, and 
appears to emphasize, not only the grief he is 
enduring, but also the strength with which, 
except for one bare instant, he has controlled 
that grief. The passage is another crowning 
proof of Milton's power of blending the char- 
acteristics of Greek and Hebrew, and it is 



148 JOHN MILTON 

natural enough when the conditions of the 
time are taken into account. If Cambridge 
could be represented as mourning in person 
the death of King as a scholar, surely St. 
Peter could mourn with equal propriety the 
death of King as an intended priest. With 
regard to the details of the speech put into 
St. Peter's mouth, there cannot be two opinions. 
For concentrated scorn, and awful, mysterious 
power and import, the speech has no equal. 
It is to be noted further that Milton success- 
y fully adapts pastoral language to his high pur- 
poses, and that he manages the transition from 
the higher to the lower " moods " with consum- 
mate felicity. If these claims are justified, we 
are in a position to assert that Milton, by his 
fusion of the intensity of the true ode with the 
idyllic beauty and tender pathos of the pastoral 
elegy proper, has modified and improved an old 
and established form of art. But one could 
write about "Lycidas" forever and not exhaust 
the subject, so it will be as well to cry a halt 
and to pass to a brief consideration of the Latin 
elegies that culminate in the " Epitaphium 
Damonis," leaving to one side the two sonnets 



WORKS 149 

of an elegiac cast, which cannot well be con- 
sidered apart from their companion poems in 
this specially elaborate verse-form. 

The Latin elegies will not demand much at- 
tention because, with the exception of the '* Epi- 
taphium Damonis," they do not differ in quality 
from the youthful exercises already examined. 
Two poems in the '' Elegiarum Liber" are true 
elegies — viz. the second written at the age 
of seventeen on the death of the Cambridge 
beadle, and the third written about the same 
time on the death of the Bishop of Winchester. 
Even if they had been done in EngUsh, they 
would have been remarkable as the work of a 
schoolboy ; in their flowing Latin they are even 
more remarkable, although obviously academical 
in tone and matter. It is not a little curious 
that the future Puritan should in his youth have 
celebrated the deaths of two prelates in ap- 
parently sincere effusions. The tribute to the 
Bishop of Winchester contains a short descrip- 
tion of the flight of the angels bearing the soul 
of the bishop to heaven which suggests compar- 
ison with Cowley's similar verses with regard 
to Crashaw. The advantage lies with Cowley, 



I50 JOHN MILTON 

but the boyish dream of St. Cuthbert touches 
us more than the vision of either poet. 

The first poem of the collection entitled ''Syl- 
varum Liber " is an ode in alcaics lamenting 
the death of the Vice-Chancellor, a physician. 
It too was written in Milton's seventeenth year, 
and is creditable to his genius in spite of its 
classical commonplaces. The next poem but 
one of the same collection is the second of the 
prelatical elegies, being an ode in iambic trim- 
eters on the death of the Bishop of Ely. This 
tribute was written shortly after that to the 
Bishop of Winchester, and in it the Prelate 
himself makes a long speech which contains 
a good description of the passage of his soul 
through the stars. 

But it is the last of Milton's Latin elegies, 
the famous " Epitaphium Damonis," that alone 
demands serious consideration. 

This is a pastoral following the Alexandrian 
pattern more closely than does " Lycidas," and, 
as was natural, it is a tenderer poem than the 
latter. In poetic beauty it ranks above all 
Milton's elegiac verse except '' Lycidas " ; and, 
indeed, above most of the elegies ever written 



WORKS 1 5 I 

by Englishmen. It has been frequently pointed 
out that the great merit of Milton's Latin verse, 
when at its best, lies not in its technical skill, 
although that is great, but in the fact that the 
foreign medium cannot obscure the intense feel- 
i-ig of the poet. This is abundantly shown in 
the *' Epitaphium Damonis," which is so great 
a poem that one can but regret, with Mr. Pat- 
tison, that being in Latin it is unfortunately 
" inaccessible to uneducated readers." 

Like its Alexandrian and Roman models it 
is written in hexameters, and not in the elegiac 
couplet. It has the refrain 

'' Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni." ^ 

It begins by invoking the Sicilian nymphs, 
and by recalling the elegies on Daphnis and 
Bion. It abounds in classical names and 
allusions, and is minutely pastoral in its lan- 
guage and incidents — much more so than 
*' Lycidas." Lastly, and especially, it follows 
its models by showing the proper idyllic touch 

1 Thus rendered by Cowper : — 

" Go, seek your home, my lambs ; my thoughts are due 
To other cares than those of feeding you." 



152 JOHN MILTON 

— the imitation of the Alexandrian pictorial 
masters in the exquisite description of the 
goblets (" pocula ") given to the poet by 
his Neapolitan friend Manso. The strain of 
personal loss is present throughout, especially 
in the pathetic lines in which Milton's visit 
to Rome is deplored because it kept him from 
the bedside of his friend; and although there 
are no such rises to '* higher moods " as in 
" Lycidas," we are gratified by such auto- 
biographical touches as the lines that tell us 
of the contemplated abandonment of Latin 
verse as a vehicle of expression, and of the 
proposed Arthurian epic mentioned also in 
" Mansus," which, alas ! was never written. In 
fine, the *' Epitaphium Damonis '* is a great 
pastoral elegy, in which Milton fused his love 
and knowledge of the classics with his love for 
Diodati and England, and with his noble sense 
of his own high mission, into a poem which 
ought to be studied even if one has to learn 
Latin in order to read it. " Fictitious bucoli- 
cism " the poem may exhibit, but, in the words 
of Mr. Pattison, this " is pervaded by a pathos 
which, like volcanic heat, has fused into a new 



WORKS 153 

compound the dilapidated debris of the Theoc- 
ritean world." 

Particular criticism is probably unnecessary, 
but I may suggest a comparison of the closing 
lines descriptive of Diodati's reception in Para- 
dise with the similar close of *' Lycidas," and 
I cannot forbear pointing out the pathos and 
felicity of these verses : — 

" Vix sibi quisque parem de millibus invenit unum, 
Aut si sors dederit tandem non aspera votis, 
Ilium inopina dies, qua non speraveris hora, 
Surripit, asternum linquens in saecula damnum." 

These have been Englished by Cowper as 
follows : — , 

" We scarce in thousands meet one kindred mind. 
And if the long-sought good at last we find, 
When least we fear it, Death our treasure steals. 
And gives our heart a wound that nothing heals." 

But the only man to translate these lines 
properly was Milton himself. 

The " Epitaphium Damonis " was not only 
Milton's last important Latin poem ; it was 
also, as we have seen, his last real elegy. 
In the turmoil of public and the sorrows of 



154 JOHN MILTON 

private life, his mighty spirit was to find other 
and higher work to perform for "the great 
Task-master's eye." That work will be spoken 
of in the chapters that follow ; here the hope 
may be expressed that no reader will suffer 
himself to be so dazzled by the splendor of 
the poetical achievements of Milton's old age 
(and dazzled he will be if he approach it with 
a mind trained in the principles of sound criti- 
cism and unaffected by the shallow and un- 
cultured revolt against classical standards of 
excellence that is so rife at present) as to be 
blind to the charm, the blended grace and 
power that mark the noble poems of his 
youth. Great even to sublimity is the Milton 
of "Paradise Lost," 

" from the cheerful ways of men, 
Cut off." 

Great, too, and matchless in charm is the 
Milton of "Lycidas," 

" With eager thought warbling his Doric lay." 



CHAPTER VI 



THE PROSE WORKS 



Quite recently Mr. Gosse, in his admirable 
short history of English literature, has ex- 
pressed a doubt whether people really can 
admire Milton's prose. Some years ago Mr. 
Lowell declared that his prose had " no style, 
in the higher sense " ; that his sentences were 
often "loutish and difficult"; that he was care- 
less of euphony ; that he too often blustered, 
et cetera. Nearly all critics have admitted the 
splendor of his best passages, but have has- 
tened immediately to quaUfy their praises by 
animadverting upon his clumsy syntax, his lack 
of coherence, his coarseness, his malignity, his 
want of humor, and the like. Most of these 
charges have, indeed, a basis of truth, which 
makes them difficult to refute ; but like much 
other current criticism they do their object gross 
injustice. In reality Milton is a great prose 
155 



156 JOHN MILTOxN 

writer, perhaps the greatest in our literature ; 
but his greatness will never emerge from criti- 
cism that is chiefly negative. It may be a rash 
claim to make, yet I will be bold enough to 
maintain that, when all allowances are made, 
the prose works of Milton contain the noblest 
and most virile EngUsh that can be found in 
our literature, and that this is true, not merely 
of detached passages of the ** Areopagitica " 
alone, but of the mass of his writings. Such a 
claim cannot, of course, be made good here or 
elsewhere ; but it will be disputed with a posi- 
tiveness inversely proportional to the dispu- 
tants' study of Milton's controversial tracts.^ 

The phrase just used contains in itself many 
of the reasons for Milton's failure to take his 
proper rank as a prose writer. As a rule Mil- 
ton wrote as a prose pamphleteer and advocate, 
and neither his matter nor his manner is calcu- 
lated to please readers whose minds, indurated 
by preconception and prejudice, cannot play 
about the subjects he discusses. A partisan of 

1 Unless, of course, the critic has a theory to prove, as was 
Mr. Pattison's case, who, in his treatment of the prose works, 
is distinctly biassed. 



WORKS 157 

the Stuarts, a devotee of liturgies, a reader 
of over-delicate sensibilities, will be almost cer- 
tainly unable to judge Milton fairly. Even 
those who agree with him in religious and po- 
litical matters will be generally incapable of 
getting rid of the effects of their present envi- 
ronment and dealing with him with that sym- 
pathy which is absolutely indispensable to all 
true criticism. As manners have improved, 
controversy has ceased to please; therefore it 
requires considerable effort to shake off our 
prepossessions sufficiently to get the proper aes- 
thetic effect of Milton's writings. If, however, 
we can imagine ourselves fighting for an ideal 
state and an ideal religion, rejoicing in over- 
coming a doughty adversary, advocating liberty 
of thought and expression, promulgating a new 
system of education, — in short, if we can make 
ourselves ideal partisans of some great cause, 
we shall then be able to delight, not merely in 
Milton's exalted passages, but in the general 
vigor of his style, in the weight and dignity 
of his learning, in his thunderous wrath, in the 
sharpness of his satire, in the marvellous vari- 
ety and abundance of his vocabulary, and in 



158 JOHN MILTON 

the thoroughly direct and masciiUne tone of his 
thought. In other words, we must steep our- 
selves in the Miltonic spirit before we can 
begin to realize how far Milton surpasses all 
competitors in strength and nobility as well as 
how far he possesses other qualities of style, 
such as charm and lucidity, usually denied him. 
We shall surely not comprehend him if we at- 
tempt to judge him from the " Areopagitica " 
or from a volume of specimens ; yet it is to 
be feared that this is what many critics have 
unhesitatingly done. 

The prose writings divide themselves natu- 
rally and easily into four groups. First, the five 
anti-prelatical tracts of 1 641- 1642; secondly, 
the four divorce tracts of 1 643-1 645 ; thirdly, 
the political pamphlets from 1649- 1660, eleven 
in number unless the " Areopagitica " be added 
to make the full dozen; fourthly, the miscel- 
lanies, including the letters, state and pri- 
vate, the Grammar and the Logic, the histories 
of Britain and Muscovy, the " De Doctrina 
Christiana," and another ecclesiastical pam- 
phlet, the letter to Hartlib on Education, and 
one or two short and unimportant publications. 



WORKS 



159 



These four groups we may now characterize 
briefly. 

The titles of the ecclesiastical tracts are not 
alluring, running as they do : *' Of Reformation 
touching Church Discipline in England," " Of 
Prelatical Episcopacy," "Animadversions upon 
the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectym- 
nuus," "The Reason of Church Government 
urg'd against Prelaty," " Apology against a 
Pamphlet called A Modest Confutation of the 
Animadversions, etc." The form in which 
their author gave them to the world is no more 
alluring. They will always be heavy pam- 
phlets, for even the resources of the modern 
printer cannot prevail against long paragraphs 
and defective chapter divisions. Yet it may be 
doubted whether seven more glorious para- 
graphs can be found in literature than those 
that close the first tract, or whether there is 
extant a more superb autobiographical passage 
than that contained in the preface to the sec- 
ond book of the " Reason of Church Govern- 
ment urg'd against Prelaty." 

It is obviously impossible to analyze these 
pamphlets here, but it may be remarked that a 



l6o JOHN MILTON 

careful study of them reveals the fact that Mil- 
ton is more at home in historical and scholarly 
disquisitions than in the practical application of 
his principles, which are always of a root and 
branch order. Being an ideaUst, he cannot 
compromise; being Milton, he is absolutely re- 
gardless of consequences. But he is none the 
less a weighty and well-girt reasoner. Even 
when he is dealing with such a scholar as 
Archbishop Usher, he proves himself no mean 
antagonist in his use of patristic learning, and 
against Bishop Hall he is actually nimble to the 
point of indecorousness in his movements. He 
ascends and descends all the grades of parti- 
sanship from that of the prophet to that of the 
scolding fishwife ; but perhaps only in one in- 
stance, that unfortunate one of the episcopal 
hose, does he cease entirely to be the powerful 
advocate of a dignified cause. 

That cause — the cutting off of episcopacy 
and the approximation of the EngHsh Church 
to that of Geneva — may not appeal to many of 
us now, but has little to do with the power of 
Milton's style. The subject is at least as inter- 
esting as that of Bossuet's most famous funeral 



WORKS l6l 

oration, and if the style is great and we are 
lovers of style, we should surely take the time 
to read the tracts. But what of the style ? — 
for we may discuss it as fittingly in connection 
with these pamphlets, which exhibit it fully, as 
we should be able to do on completing the total 
body of the prose writings. 

As we have seen, many of the charges 
brought against Milton's prose style must be 
partly admitted. He is turgid, but he is also 
past master of the potent phrase. Not only his 
sentences, but often his paragraphs, are loose 
because he does not pay sufficient attention to 
such an elementary matter as the unity of sub- 
ject. But this general looseness of structure 
corresponds, of course, with Milton's looseness 
of thought, which in turn is due not to his lack 
of logic or power of cogent reasoning — he can 
be as logical and cogent as he pleases — but to 
the fulness of his erudition and to the main 
purpose of his controversial writings, i.e. to 
his design to overwhelm his adversaries and 
sweep away his readers by the mass and vol- 
ume of his utterance. It is a great mistake to 
suppose that Milton did not know how to use 



1 62 JOHN MILTON 

the short sentence, or that he was unacquainted 
with the advantage of the Enghsh over the 
Latin idiom for the purposes of the writer who 
aims at a swift and strong expression of his 
ideas. Much of his prose is anything but the 
stiff, splendidly brocaded texture that many of 
the critics lay stress on ; much of it is anything 
but the loose, interminably flowing robe with 
which many of us imagine that he continually 
enfolded himself. The fact is that Milton's 
prose structure, like his poetic, constantly im- 
presses the student with its variety and mobil- 
ity. His diction, too, is at times far from stiff, 
pedantic, and Latinistic, although his profound 
Latin studies plainly influenced it. I know of 
no English writer, unless it be Shakspere, who 
gives one such a sense of a copious, nay, in- 
exhaustible, vocabulary. Perhaps this is due, 
as critics have remarked, to rapidity of circula- 
tion rather than to the actual quantity of differ- 
ent words employed ; but it is the effect, not 
the cause, that concerns us, and the effect is 
that of an almost unbounded affluence of words. 
From the lowest grade of the scurrilous and vul- 
gar, up to the most technically erudite and po- 



WORKS 163 

etically sonorous of terms, his range is free and 
sovereign. He can scold like a shrew, he can 
discourse like an archangel; and if he indulges 
too much in the first role, owing to the temper 
of his times, and often to the nature of his task 
and the character of his adversary, we should 
never forget that he is the only mortal man 
who has ever been able to bear the weight of 
the second. This, I think, is his chief distinc- 
tion — whether in his prose or in his poetry he 
is the noblest of writers. I will go farther and 
say that in his prose he is the most overwhelm- 
ingly strong of writers, and that I am bound to 
prefer superlative nobility and strength to all 
other qualities of style, or the sum of them. 
Critics like Mark Pattison may set Hooker 
above him for one reason and Bacon for an- 
other; but neither Hooker, nor Bacon, nor 
Jeremy Taylor, nor Sir Thomas Browne (whom 
Lowell avouches in this connection), nor any 
subsequent writer of English, gives me the sense 
of sublime power and variety and nobility — 
of eloquence in its highest meaning, that pos- 
sesses me when I read the prose of Milton. 
Regular it is not, in the way that we properly 



164 JOHN MILTON 

demand of modern prose with its multiplicity 
of duties ; it has not the clarity, the neatness, 
the precision of the French; it does not com- 
bine subtle charm and picturesqueness and brill- 
iancy as does the prose of a writer like Chateau- 
briand ; but it is better than all this, better than 
the stately periods of De Quincey or the regal 
march of Gibbon, better than the vigor of Macau- 
lay or the beauty of Ruskin or the quiet force 
of Newman — it is either the utterance of a 
demigod or the speech of an angel. ^ 

1 It is not to be expected that the above praise will be 
deemed less than dithyiambic by any reader who has not fairly 
soaked himself in Milton's prose; neither is it to be expected 
that I should analyze the prose writings here in order to try to 
prove my point, or that readers who desire to investigate for 
themselves will be easily induced to study them in their present 
unattractive and almost inaccessible or rather inabordahle form. 
Under these circumstances I shall resort to the expedient of 
referring in this lengthy note to certain passages of the tractate 
" Of Reformation," which more or less bear out some of the 
contentions made above. 

The twentieth paragraph of Book I. contains six short 
sentences with the cumulative effect Macaulay used to aim at. 
It should be noticed in this connection that Milton's wide 
use of the relative is one of the chief syntactical reasons for 
his obscurity, and that frequently his sentences are long only 
because of faulty punctuation. A little familiarity with liis style 
will, however, speedily minimize the effects of these hindrances. 



WORKS 165 

The matter of Milton's second group of 
tracts is probably as little attractive to most 
people as that of his first, nor is his manner 

That Milton could use vigorous, unpoetic, nay, unacademic 
English when he chose, is plain from such sentences or portions 
of sentences as these : — 

The bishops " suffered themselves to be the common stales, 
to countenance with their prostituted gravities every politic 
fetch that was then on foot." 

" It was not of old that a conspiracy of bishops could frus- 
trate and fob off the right of the people." 

" So have they hamstrung the valor of the subject by seek- 
ing to effeminate us all at home." 

Such sentences could be multiplied indefinitely, but not 
more so than noble passages. The close of the whole tract has 
been referred to in the text, but one never knows when Milton 
is going to break out into a sublime strain, or indeed into some 
exquisite collocation of sounds like the following, which makes 
one smile at Mr. Lowell's remark about the lack of euphony : 
" But he [God], when we least deserved, sent out a gentle gale 
and message of peace from the wings of those his cherubims 
that fan his mercy-seat." The New England critic might, one 
would think, have hesitated to set up his ear against Mil- 
ton's, if only in gratitude for the following sentences about his 
ancestors : — 

" Next what numbers of faithful and free-born Englishmen, 
and good Christians, have been constrained to forsake their 
dearest home, their friends and kindred, whom nothing but 
the wide ocean, and the savage deserts of America, could hide 
and shelter from the fury of the bishops. C) sir, if we could 
but see the shape of our dear mother England, as poets are 



1 66 JOHN MILTON 

of reasoning much more convincing. In his 
*'0f Reformation" he had been guilty of ar- 
guing that because St. Martin had, after his 
elevation to the episcopate, complained of a 
loss of spiritual power, therefore God plainly 
had taken a " displeasure " at *' an universal 
rottenness and gangrene in the whole [episco- 
pal] function." In his divorce tracts he was 
capable of arguing for almost unlimited free- 
dom of divorce, with scarcely a mention of 
the evils that would ensue to the family thus 
broken up. Yet neither in his precipitant in- 
ference from one particular to the general, nor 
in his selfish presentation of the divorce ques- 
tion from the man's point of view alone, was 
Milton other than his impetuous, whole-souled 

wont to give a personal form to what they please, how 
would she appear, think ye, but in a mourning weed, with 
ashes upon her head and tears abundantly flowing from her 
eyes to behold so many of her children exposed at once, and 
thrust from things of dearest necessity, because their con- 
science could not assent to things which the bishops thought 
indifferent." 

Do we not here, and in countless other passages, find Milton 
standing, to make use of his own noble words, on " one of the 
highest arcs, that human contemplation circling upwards can 
make from the globy sea whereon she stands " ? 



WORKS 167 

self. He was incapable of intellectual dishon- 
esty of any conscious kind. He merely saw 
certain phases of his subject and pressed them 
home. He believed thoroughly in the deprav- 
ity of bishops, and he felt deeply the need of 
some greater freedom in marriage, hence it 
never occurred to him that his methods of 
arguing could be pronounced disingenuous or 
misleading. He was a zealous Protestant, and 
therefore an individualist, that is, a more or 
less strenuous but not very cautious reasoner. 
Yet it is idle to maintain the attitude of those 
critics who seem to think that Milton's rea- 
soning in ecclesiastical, social, and political 
matters was chiefly " sound and fury," or that 
it is impossible for latter-day readers to com- 
prehend and sympathize with the positions 
taken by him. It would be truer to say that 
his positions are always inteUigible, if not 
always sound, that his power as a writer is 
almost beyond praise, and his character one 
that none can comprehend without respect 
and admiration. 

The best of the divorce tracts is the first, 
*' The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce." 



1 68 JOHN MILTON 

The second, "The Judgment of Martin Bucer 
concerning Divorce," consists mainly of trans- 
lations from the Latin of this eminent Protes- 
tant divine of the age of Edward VL, and 
of Milton's comments thereupon. " Tetrachor- 
don," as its name imports, is a commentary 
on the four chief passages in Scripture treat- 
ing of marriage and its annulment, while 
" Colasterion " is likewise self-explanatory in 
its title, as it is devoted to excoriating cer- 
tain persons who had been rash enough to 
censure Milton for his " licentious " opinions. 
The two last-named pamphlets may be safely 
passed over by the general reader, for the 
first, although calm and dignified, is dry 
through the nature of the subject and the 
method of its treatment ; and the second does 
not afford a fair measure of the vigor with 
which Milton could expound his principles, 
although it does give a fair idea of his abil- 
ity to hector an adversary. But the reader 
who fails to read the first tract will fail to 
understand Milton in his capacity as an ideal 
reformer regardless of consequences. His mo- 
tives were much less likely to be misunder- 



WORKS 169 

stood in the episcopal controversy and in the 
Royalist muddle than in his attack upon indis- 
soluble marriages ; but Milton was of all men 
who ever lived the most resolute to follow his 
mind whithersoever it might carry him. He 
never went so far as to doubt the prime ne- 
cessity of Scriptural warrant, or to cease to rely 
upon ancient, especially classical, precedents ; 
but this fact, while it necessarily militates 
against the present currency of his ecclesias- 
tical and political writings, should not blind us 
to the further facts, that for his time he was 
a most liberal thinker, and that no age has 
ever produced a more ideal one. It is this 
bold ideahty that forms a basis, as it were, to 
his eloquence, which from now on prompts 
him to appeal in clarion tones either to the 
ParUament or the English people or the world 
at large. These appeals, whether in prefaces, 
as is the case with the first two divorce tracts, 
or in a special plea like the " Areopagitica," 
or in scattered passages, as frequently in the 
political works, furnish in the main the noble 
prose on which we have laid such stress ; the 
strong prose is furnished by the body of 



1^0 JOHN MILTON 

nearly every book or pamphlet that proceeded 
from his pen.^ 

The ideality of the divorce tracts, which is 
seen not merely in Milton's fearless plea for 
individual liberty, but in his constant assertion 
that in marriage the mind counts for more 
than the body, is manifested just as strikingly 
in the nobly suggestive if impracticable " Of 
Education," and in the far more effective 
" Areopagitica," which through the irony of 
fate is almost the only thing that keeps him 
alive as a prose writer. The latter tract, 
superb as it is, does not contain his noblest 
work; nor perhaps does it represent his ham- 
mering vigor, his impetuous flow, as well as 
" The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates " 
and the "First Defence" do, or his compact 
strength as well as " Eikonoklastes " does. 
Still, it is so splendid that one is almost 
content, as is the case with Gray's " Elegy," 
not to attempt to disturb the public in a pre- 
possession so creditable to it. 

1 In addition to the prefaces the reader should study also Chap- 
ters 111. and VI. of the " Doctrine and Discipline." Chapters VIII. 
and XVII. show how subtle Milton's reasoning could be at times. 



WORKS 171 

Passing now to the more specifically political 
tracts, it must suffice to say of the *' Tenure " 
that it is admirably sincere and straightfor- 
ward, — that it fairly throbs with the heart- 
beats of an ideal son of liberty, — but that it 
might well be more succinct in its logic and 
more true to the promise of its title. Milton 
does not show that it is lawful ** for any who 
have the power " to put a tyrant to death, 
but he thunders splendidly against tyrants and 
turncoat Presbyterians, though not personally 
abusing Charles I., and gives ample proof of 
his own sincerity and courage. In " Eikono- 
klastes " he undertakes a harder piece of 
work, but one in which he is far more suc- 
cessful, in my judgment, than most critics 
have allowed. He had to answer, chapter by 
chapter, a book believed by thousands to have 
been written by a martyred king — a book 
which was practically a last will and testa- 
ment. He is usually represented as having 
done it in a "savage" manner, — even Pro- 
fessor Masson allows himself to use the term, 
— but this is quite questionable. It would be 
idle to argue that Milton treated Charles 



1/2 JOHN MILTON 

gently, but I am inclined to think that he held 
himself in — a hard tavsk — and that his general 
treatment of the king and his book was little 
more than warrantably sarcastic and severe, it 
being of course impossible for him then, or 
for some of us now, to look upon Charles as 
other than an evasive and dangerous foe. Mil- 
ton was practically a republican, and most of 
his subsequent critics have been tinctured with 
monarchical prepossessions, hence his attitude 
toward Charles has seldom been fairly pre- 
sented. Probably Richard Baron, who reissued 
" Eikonoklastes " in 1756, went too far in his 
praises of it, but it is certainly a performance 
of remarkable vigor and level strength — per- 
haps on the whole the most uniformly power- 
ful of Milton's prose works. The arrangement 
as a commentary mars the modern reader's 
pleasure, and some of the arguments are both 
tedious and weak, but it was no credit to 
Milton's contemporaries that the book had so 
little temporary or permanent effect.^ 

1 The general vigor of style and matter is seen clearly in 
Section VIll. Section X. contains some excellent sarcasm. 
Milton, it may be remarked, may not have lambent humor, but 



WORKS 173 

The pamphlet devoted to the treaty made 
by the Earl of Ormond with the Irish rebels 
hardly deserves our notice, although the Pres- 
bytery of Belfast must have wished in their 
secret hearts that Milton had been otherwise 
employed than in writing it ; but we cannot 
afford to be so summary in our treatment of 
the Reply to Salmasius and the two treatises 
that grew out of it. The moral grandeur dis- 
played by Milton in preferring to lose his sight 
rather than that his beloved and then to him 
glorious England should go undefended, has 
been sufficiently praised elsewhere. It may 
be as well, however, to remark that this sacri- 
fice of Milton's is not a figment of the imagi- 
nation of his worshippers, but is attested to 

he possesses an abundance of the thunder-bolt order. For 
grim, strong, hitting-the-mark shafts of scorn he has few or 
no rivals. Section XXIV. is an example of the effects of that 
weakness which almost invariably attends strong prejudices. 
Section XXV. toward the close shows a lack of charity distressing 
to modern notions ; but Sections XXVII. and XXVIII., which 
conclude the book, are strong and dignified. It is worth while 
to notice that the so-called attack on Shakspere in Section I. has 
been entirely misread, and that, except when he engages in vir- 
ulent personal controversy, there is little occasion for Milton's 
readers to fault the taste displayed in the prose works. 



174 JOHN MILTON 

by himself in that splendid autobiographical 
passage which gives " The Second Defence of 
the People of England " its chief value. As 
for the general qualities of style and matter 
to be discovered in the " First Defence " or 
Reply to Salmasius, in the '' Second Defence," 
and in the more specific attack on Morus en- 
titled "Authoris Pro Se Defensio," it must be 
confessed that the general vigor with which 
the political arguments are pressed home is 
matched by the scorn with which both Sal- 
masius and Morus are overwhelmed. It is 
idle to object to this or that special bit of 
pleading, or to urge that no decent man, much 
less a Christian, ought so foully to insult an- 
other. It is equally idle to claim that Milton 
had no right to reject the testimony as to 
Morus's at least partial innocence of the au- 
thorship of the " Regii Sanguinis Clamor," 
with its scurrilous abuse of Milton. This criti- 
cism is idle simply because it is beside the 
point. Milton, like every other controversialist 
of his time, was aiming to overwhelm his ad- 
versary. His weapon was a club, or at most 
a battle-axe, not the rapier Pope afterward 



WORKS 175 

used. He meant to fell Salmasius and Morus, 
and he did it by means of his superior learn- 
ing, his thorough belief in the justice of his 
own cause, his equally thorough contempt of 
his adversaries, his marvellous power of writ- 
ing Latin as though it were a living tongue, 
and finally the vibrating vigor and frequent 
nobility of his thought. Of their kind, then, 
these political broadsides, at least the first two, 
for it is permissible to wish that the second 
attack on Morus had been withheld, are mas- 
terpieces, whether the present age cares for 
such Hterary performances of vigor and scur- 
rility or not. We need neither read them nor 
imitate them ; but to pick flaws in them in 
accordance with modern notions, or to deny 
their greatness after their own kind, is to be 
distinctly unjust. 

The answer to Salmasius suffers, as does 
so much of Milton's writing in answer to 
books and pamphlets, from the fact that he 
has to keep track of his adversary and to in- 
dulge in much antiquarian discussion. This 
is less the case in the " Second Defence," 
which is consequently much oftener quoted, 



176 JOHN MILTON 

though one could wish that at least the close 
of the answer to Salmasius, with its splendid 
warning to the People of England, were as 
well known as the hyperbolical praise of Chris- 
tina of Sweden in the "Second Defence" is. 
Milton could have given other reasons for his 
praise of that sovereign besides the favor she 
had shown his retort to her protege Salma- 
sius, and he could also be proud of the fact 
that his noble praise of Cromwell had closed 
with full as noble a warning. He could like- 
wise feel that if he indulged in a retrospec- 
tive glance at his own life in reply to Morus's, 
or rather Du Moulin's, foul charges, he did it 
in a way that would make posterity his debtor, 
and the just pride of even Horace and Shak- 
spere seem almost a matter of slight conse- 
quence in comparison. He could hardly with 
justice have looked back with such content- 
ment on any passage in the *' Pro Se De- 
fensio," but he may be excused if he chuckled 
grimly over the picture he drew of Bontia's 
scratching the cheeks of her clerical seducer. 
But perhaps it will be well to dismiss this 
subject of the political works — for the small 



WORKS 



177 



tracts on the " Civil Power in Ecclesiastical 
Causes," on " The Likeliest Means to Remove 
Hirelings out of the Church," and the " Ready 
and Easy Way to Establish a Free Common- 
wealth," while interesting as throwing light on 
Milton's broad though not fully complete no- 
tions of toleration, his preference for an unpaid 
ministry, and his aristocratic hankering for a 
permanent Council of State, composed of the 
best men, are not of prime importance — by 
giving in outline his own defence of his habit 
of indulging in strenuous personalities in the 
course of his controversies. This defence can 
be found in the prefatory remarks to the 
"Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's De- 
fence against Smectymnuus," and although 
made early in his career, will apply with full 
force to his later works. 

The defence in question indicates, perhaps, 
that some mild remonstrance against his vehe- 
mence had been made to Milton by discreet 
friends rather than that his own conscience 
had been troubled in the matter. When he 
was defending his principles, Milton's con- 
science was always serene, such divine confi- 



1/8 JOHN MILTON 

dence did he have in his own integrity of 
purpose and sureness of vision. But the de- 
fence he does condescend to make of his man- 
ner of conducting a controversy is, on the 
whole, strong and well put, his critics being 
called upon to explain "why those two most 
rational faculties of human intellect, anger and 
laughter, were first seated in the breast of 
man," if they were not to be used against a 
" false prophet taken in the greatest, dearest, 
and most dangerous cheat, the cheat of souls." 
The critics might have replied, indeed, that 
certain faculties must be kept under by the 
Christian apologist or the prudent publicist, 
and that a debater ought not to begin by beg- 
ging the question ; but on the whole a majority 
of Milton's readers probably felt that he had 
defended himself well, if, in fact, many of 
them in that age of rough-and-ready contro- 
versy thought that he needed any defence. 
And we, remembering the fact that he de- 
fended none but great causes against men 
whom he was bound to regard as " false proph- 
ets," may surely forgive him all his errors of 
taste, because, in his own words, he unfeign- 



WORKS I 79 

edly loved " the souls of men, which is the 
dearest love and stirs up the noblest jealousy." 

With regard now to the miscellaneous works 
we can afford to be very brief. The Logic 
and the Latin Grammar are of pedagogical in- 
terest merely. The state letters and papers 
and the small amount of private correspond- 
ence, together with the academical prolusions, 
are all stately, and full of historical or bio- 
graphical interest, but are still minor composi- 
tions. *'The History of Muscovy" is but a 
well-written compilation, and the " History of 
Britain " — most of which was probably writ- 
ten during his schoolmaster days — is more 
important, not because it has any real historical 
or philosophical value, but because it unfolds 
the early legends of British history and the 
chief events of the Anglo-Saxon annals with 
a literary power that is quite remarkable. Mil- 
ton had erudition and wisdom enough to have 
made a great historian, at least for his times ; 
but events determined that he should write 
only a picturesque and partly satiric narrative. 

The tract ''Of True Religion, Heresy, 
Schism, Toleration" is chiefly noticeable as 



l8o JOHN MILTON 

indicating that even the Milton who in 1660 
made his forlorn plea for some sort of republic 
was forced to accommodate himself to his 
times, and plead for a toleration not compre- 
hending Roman Catholics as the only one 
practicable at the period, or indeed sorting 
with his own political principles. But the 
treatise " Of Christian Doctrine " is of more 
importance. By a curious chain of events it re- 
mained in concealment until 1823. Two years 
later its publication at the expense of King 
George IV. gave Macaulay an opportunity 
to write his famous essay, but produced little 
effect upon Anglican theology. Milton had 
worked upon the book for many years, develop- 
ing his ideas from a most minute study of the 
Bible, whose ultimate authority he respected 
as much as he was careless of the theological 
opinions currently derived therefrom. Those 
critics are doubtless right who maintain that had 
the treatise been published during Milton's life- 
time it would have created quite a stir. Com- 
ing to light about a century and a half later, 
and being almost totally devoid of eloquence 
and charm, it has proved of little interest 



WORKS l8l 

save in so far as it has confirmed the impres- 
sion derived from ** Paradise Lost " that Milton 
was more or less of an Arian, and has shown 
that he was bold enough to oppose Sabbatari- 
anism and to tolerate polygamy (nowhere con- 
demned in Scripture) and the doctrine of the 
sleep of the soul between death and the res- 
urrection. Had Milton's high-church and Roy- 
alist opponents but suspected him of such 
heresies, they might have rendered him still 
more obnoxious to certain not over-intelligent 
classes of readers, but fortune was kind to 
him at least in this particular, and his book is 
not sufficiently read now to endanger him with 
any one. Dr. Garnett has practically said the 
last word about the matter by observing that 
'^ if anything could increase our reverence for 
Milton, it would be that his last years should 
have been devoted to a labor so manifestly 
inspired by disinterested benevolence and haz- 
ardous love of truth." 

" Disinterested benevolence and hazardous 
love of truth " — these are indeed the character- 
istic notes of Milton the man, just as strength 
and nobility are of Milton the writer. They 



1^2 JOHN MILTON 

emerge from any careful study of his works, 
but as this can be expected of but few in 
our fast-reading age, it is fortunate that they 
emerge also from many a quotable passage. 
Where in English, or any other literature, we 
may well ask, can the strength and nobility that 
emerge from this paragraph be matched or 
even approximated ? — 

" Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs 
of saints, some one may perhaps be heard of- 
fering at high strains in new and lofty meas- 
ures, to sing and celebrate thy divine mercies 
and marvellous judgments in this land through- 
out all ages; whereby this great and warlike 
nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and 
continual practice of truth and righteousness, 
and casting far from her the rags of her old 
vices, may press on hard to that high and 
happy emulation to be found the soberest, 
wisest, and most Christian people at that day, 
when thou, the eternal and shortly expected 
King, shalt open the clouds to judge the sev- 
eral kingdoms of the world, and distributing 
national honors and rewards to religious and 
just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all 



WORKS 183 

earthly tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal 
and mild monarchy through heaven and earth ; 
when they undoubtedly, that by their labors, 
counsels, and prayers, have been earnest for 
the common good of religion and their coun- 
try, shall receive above the inferior orders of 
the blessed, the regal addition of principalities, 
legions, and thrones into their glorious titles, 
and in supereminence of beatific vision, pro- 
gressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle 
of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with 
joy and bliss, in over measure for ever.''^ 

For such prose what words of mortal praise 
are adequate ? Organ-music the critics call it 
— the prose of a poet rather than strictly poetic 
prose — sublime, magnificent, unrivalled — all 
these phrases and epithets have been applied 
to it, and justly — but I can compare it only 
with something I never heard save through 
Milton's own mouth in "Paradise Lost," the 
speech of Raphael, the archangel of God. 

1 " Of Reformation in England," Book II., next to last para- 
graph. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE SONNETS 

Although the entire sonnet-work of Milton 
is not equal in value to that of Shakspere, or 
perhaps even to that of Wordsworth, if the lat- 
ter's failures be overlooked, there are reasons 
for maintaining that he is the most masterly 
of all English sonneteers. For melodious sweet- 
ness, for power to analyze and express every 
phase of the passion of love Shakspere, with 
his exquisite quatorzains, is unsurpassed ; but 
Milton is equally so in his command of the 
stricter sonnet forms, in his abiHty to extract 
noble music out of them, and in his adherence 
to the canon that the sonnet is a short poem 
adapted to an occasional subject. In other 
words, Milton uses the sonnet more regularly 
and at the same time more nobly than any other 
English poet does, yet he has also shown his 
originality by imparting a special movement of 
184 



WORKS 185 

his own to the stanza by omitting the pause 
after the eighth Une that is necessary to the 
strict Petrarchan form. Furthermore, it is to 
be observed that none of Milton's sonnets is 
poor, that at least two-thirds are great, and 
that two, if not more, are grand — as grand 
perhaps as a short poem can ever be. It is 
almost needless to say that these two sonnets 
are the XVIIIth, "On the Late Massacre in 
Piedmont," and the XlXth, "On his Blindness." 
Counting the Italian sonnets and the elon- 
gated sonnet colla coda, " On the New Forcers 
of Conscience," we have just twenty-four pieces, 
to which the Italian canzone may be added as 
a twenty-fifth. They were written at odd times 
from 1630 to 1658, the first ten (or eleven, 
counting the canzone), as usually printed, ap- 
pearing in the edition of 1645, the remainder 
adorning that of 1673, save numbers XV., XVI., 
XVII., and XXII., which were suppressed for 
political reasons until 1694, when Edward Phil- 
lips gave them to the world along with the life of 
his uncle. Their occasional composition is plain 
proof that Milton used them as a means of giving 
a brief relief to his overcharged emotions, espe- 



1 86 JOHN MILTON 

daily during the twenty busy years when he was 
cut off from elaborate poetical labors. 

The first eight pieces, counting the canzone, 
are obviously to be classed as juvenilia so far 
as anything of Milton's can be thus classed. 
The first, "To the Nightingale" (1630.?), is 
characterized mainly by charm, and hardly de- 
serves Mr. Pattison's censure for the " conceit " 
that it contains. Any poet might have used 
the tradition about the cuckoo and the nightin- 
gale without danger of becoming a Marinist, 
But we must not forget to be grateful to Mr. 
Pattison for calHng attention to the contrast 
Milton offers to most previous (and subsequent) 
sonneteers by his noble directness of phrase, 
his total avoidance of quip and quirk. This 
straightforward quality, both of expression and 
of feeling, is fully apparent in the second 
sonnet, " On His Being arrived at the Age 
of Twenty-three" (1631), which is as nobly 
autobiographical as any of the famous prose 
passages. 

The five ItaHan sonnets and the canzone 
probably date from the continental journey and 
the shadowy Bolognese love affair. They are 



WORKS 187 

all addressed to some unknown lady save one, 
and that tells Diodati how much she has en- 
slaved him. It is hard to say how sincere they 
are, but those of us that are romantically in- 
clined will prefer to think that they represent a 
genuine, if transitory, attachment. Competent 
Italian critics have detected idiomatic faults in 
them, which was to be expected. Even an 
amateur can notice that in the pauses and the 
arrangement of rhymes in the sestet, Milton has 
not followed the most impeccable models, since 
three out of the five sonnets end in the es- 
chewed though not prohibited couplet. But in 
their general spirit and matter, these sonnets 
are no mere exercises in a strange tongue ; they 
are real poems by a student of Petrarch who 
has caught not a httle of that master's subtle 
charm. 

Sonnets VIII., XL, XII., XV., XVI., XVII., 
XV 1 1 1., XXIII., and the sonnet colla coda, 
group themselves as especially concerned with 
Milton's life under the Commonwealth. The 
splendid petition bidding " Captain, or Colonel, 
or Knight in arms" not to lift ''spear against 
the Muses' bower," serves as a prelude to the 



1 88 JOHN MILTON 

noble encomiums on Fairfax, Cromwell,^ and the 
younger Vane ; the sonnet on the " Massacre 
of the Vaudois " is the trumpet note of the col- 
lection ; while the second sonnet to Cyriack 
Skinner is the proud appeal of the defeated 
champion of liberty from fickle humanity to an 
all-seeing and all-powerful God of Righteous- 
ness. Is there a nobler passage in literature 
than these lines ? — 

" What supports me, dost thou ask ? 
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied 
In Liberty's defence, my noble task, 
Of which all Europe talks from side to side. 
This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask 
Content, though blind, had I no better guide." 

Compared with these verses the three satiri- 
cal sonnets in defence of his divorce tracts 
represent a much lower plane of thought and 
execution, but even these are fine in their way, 
and are proofs of Milton's astonishing mental 
and moral vigor. 

Leaving out the grand sonnet " On His 
Blindness," which is too well known to require 

1 Compare the great prose tributes in the " Second Defence." 



WORKS 189 

comment and is perhaps the best single illustra- 
tion of the sublimity of Milton's character to be 
found in his works, we have in the remaining 
seven sonnets a series of domestic tributes to 
friends, two of them being elegiacal. That to a 
"Virtuous Young Lady," who is still unknown, 
is so full of charm that it ought to be quoted 
whenever Milton is attacked for his supposed 
indifference to women. Much the same thing 
may be said of the more highly sustained 
address to Lady Margaret Ley. The sonnet 
to Lawes on his book of Airs reminds us of 
''Comus," and of the fact that Milton would not 
let politics interfere with friendship. That to 
Mr. Lawrence shows us not only that Milton 
loved and understood young men, but that his 
puritanism concerned itself with the spirit of 
life, not with such externals as eating and 
drinking. The first sonnet to Skinner is per- 
haps fuller of moral wisdom than any other of 
the collection, save that on the blindness that 
must have fostered the wisdom. 

The two elegiac sonnets are both on women, 
one on a hardly identified Mrs. Catherine 
Thompson, the other on his second wife, Cath- 



1 90 JOHN MILTON 

erine Woodcock. Although the sonnet form 
has been often used for elegiac purposes since 
the days of Surrey, its elaboration scarcely 
sorts with the partial abandon required of the 
elegy, and is better adapted to encomiastic or 
memorial purposes. Milton had in view both 
these purposes in the first sonnet, and he there- 
fore succeeded excellently. In the second, for 
which he probably had, as we have seen and as 
Hallam long ago told us, an Italian model in a 
sonnet of Bernardino Rota's, affection was natu- 
rally mingled with praise ; but his object was 
rather to impart a note of noble pathos to his 
poem than to abandon himself to the typical 
elegiac lament. Hence in this case also the 
elaborate sonnet form suited him admirably and 
he produced one of the greatest and at the same 
time the most affecting of his poems. 

Space is wanting for any careful discussion 
of the sonnets from a metrical point of view, 
but the reader can easily get this elsewhere. 
It should be remarked, however, that while 
Milton is very careful of the rhyme arrange- 
ment of his octave, he is not over-meticulous 
about his sestet. Only five have the best Pe- 



WORKS 191 

trarchan sestet arrangement of three rhymes, 
eight run on two rhymes, regularly interlaced, 
and the rest are more or less irregular. This 
implies a free spirit which is confirmed by the 
innovation of allowing no pause at the end of 
the octave, an innovation which has practically 
given us a Miltonic sonnet. The carrying on 
of the sense and the gathered volume of sound 
that result, if they take away from the grace 
native to the verse form, add a compensating 
unity and dignity, and produce a true trumpet 
note. It is probably to the fact that his subtle 
ear taught Milton to make this slight change in 
certain of his sonnets that we owe the further 
fact that the sonnet on the " Massacre " is the 
grandest in our literature. 

With the sonnets we may conveniently group, 
as Masson does, the miscellaneous translated 
poems. The rhymeless version of Horace's 
'' Quis multa gracihs " is famous, and deservedly 
so. It is neither a trifle, as Masson thinks, nor 
''overrated," as Sir Theodore Martin opined, 
for it is one of the few successful examples in 
English of unrhymed stanzas that charm. But 
what shall be said of the translations of Psalms 



192 JOHN MILTON 

Ixxx.-lxxxviii., in eights and sixes, made by 
Milton in 1648, or of the versions in various 
metres attempted in 1653? Simply, with all 
due respect to his memory as a consummate 
artist, that it is a pity he ever undertook to 
rival Sternhold and Hopkins, Rous, and Barton. 
He surpassed the framers of the ** Bay Psalm 
Book," but he also furnished the single instance 
of his poetic life in which the Hebrew element 
of his genius was not balanced by the Greek. 
Of the few blank-verse translations scattered 
through the prose writings none seems note- 
worthy, although there is a touch of the true 
Milton in one of the versions from Geoffrey of 
Monmouth. 



CHAPTER VIII 



PARADISE LOST 



We have already seen that Milton's master- 
piece, begun in 1658, was probably completed 
by 1663, but not published on account of the 
Plague and Fire, until 1667. In view of the 
fact that its composition had to proceed by 
blocks of Hnes which would be retained in 
memory until some amanuensis or chance 
friendly visitor could jot them down, it cannot 
be said that slow progress was made, especially 
when it is remembered that Milton's genius 
seems to have been sluggish during the warmer 
seasons. If the presumption hold that books 
and maps had to be consulted by auxiliary 
eyes, the period of five years seems almost 
short ; but it is not clear that even the erudi- 
tion apparent in " Paradise Lost " or the traces 
of other authors to be discovered in it, might 
not have been imparted, without the interven- 
o 193 



194 JOHN MILTON 

tion of books, by Milton's well-stored mind. 
It is indeed highly probable that much of 
the study that went to make the great epic 
was done from 1640 to 1642. There are extant 
four drafts of a drama upon " Paradise Lost '* 
that date from this period, as well as a list of 
about a hundred subjects for epic or dramatic 
treatment with the theme of man's fall at their 
head. Thus we see that about eighteen years 
before he devoted himself to his masterpiece, 
Milton had given up the subject of King Arthur 
and had felt drawn to the larger topic, and 
we know from the splendid passage in ** The 
Reason of Church Government" (1641) that 
he was engaged in study and select reading, 
and ordering his life chastely and nobly, that 
he might the better succeed in his great under- 
taking. There is even evidence that he had 
begun its composition, and that the lines in 
Book IV. (32-41), in which Satan apostro- 
phizes the sun, date from about 1642. But 
Providence willed that the training given by 
study and reflection should be supplemented 
by that which can be obtained only from 
public affairs, and Milton had to become the 



WORKS 195 

spokesman of Liberty and England before he 
could be permitted to accomplish, under most 
grievous personal disabilities and disturbing 
domestic circumstances, what is seemingly the 
most marvellous single literary performance 
since ** The Divine Comedy." 

The English public realized more speedily 
than is now generally believed, what an im- 
mense boon Milton had bestowed upon it. 
Dryden, then high in popular favor, paid his 
memorable tribute, and when Addison in the 
next century wrote his famous critiques, he 
rather fanned than kindled the flame of pop- 
ular interest. People already knew that Mil- 
ton was subUme, that he was the most erudite 
of poets, that somehow out of an unfamiliar 
measure he had evoked harmonies hitherto 
unsurpassed. They knew also that if Satan 
was not technically the hero of the poem, he 
was its most interesting personage, and they 
doubtless saw, as we do, in his indomitable 
pride, a reflection of the spirit of his nobly 
unfortunate creator. They must have felt 
also, as we do, that the imaginative power 
that kept Milton aloft in the very heaven of 



196 JOHN MILTON 

heavens, that enabled him to explore the 
depths of hell and gave him support even in 
formless chaos, was something that had been 
absent from English poetry since the days of 
Shakspere. The pure charm of the scenes 
in Eden must likewise have seemed to them 
the revelation of another world of poetry than 
that to which they were accustomed. But are 
not these sensations ours? Indeed it is likely 
that not since ''Paradise Lost" was published 
has there been any serious doubt about these 
points which are after all the only vital ones 
when the poem is considered as a work of 
art. A sublime and unique style, a powerful 
imagination conducting marvellous personages 
through the most important actions conceiv- 
able by man, a charm commensurate with the 
grandeur displayed, — in short, unsurpassed no- 
bility of conception and execution, — these are 
features of "Paradise Lost" that no compe- 
tent reader has ever failed to recognize. But 
our ancestors had an advantage over us in 
that considerations not germane to the poem 
as a work of art did not affect them as they 
do us, because Milton's theology and cosmog- 



WORKS 197 

ony were more or less theirs as well. We 
who have been steadily veering away from 
the Puritan's and even from the reformer's 
view of life, not only need an apparatus of 
theological and cosmogonical explanations, in 
order to understand the poem, but when we 
do understand it, fail in many cases to sym- 
pathize with it, fancying that we have said 
the last word about it when we have called it 
a ** Puritan Epic." About this point we must 
be somewhat explicit. 

It is quite clear, from an attentive reading 
of the poem, or of the criticisms that have 
been passed upon it, that there are weak spots 
in its construction which furnish persons who 
do not like Milton the man, with plausible 
grounds for attacking Milton the poet. Mil- 
ton's Protestantism and his republicanism have 
made him obnoxious to many of his country- 
men besides Dr. Johnson, and have, as a rule, 
limited the power and disposition of foreigners 
to comprehend him ; hence a certain amount 
of harsh criticism of himself and his works has 
been more or less constant, and his admirers 
have been obliged to defend him, — a proced- 



198 JOHN MILTON 

ure which, while it has not cost him his posi- 
tion as a supreme classic, has certainly limited 
his appeal. But the most unfortunate feature 
of the matter is that most of the objections 
raised are not germane to the discussion of a 
work of art, and yet seem to be most impor- 
tant to the persons that raise them, while such 
as are germane ought not to bear upon the 
poet, since the faults stressed were inherent in 
the subject-matter of the poem. 

For example, it is perfectly true that Adam 
ought to be the hero of the epic ; yet it is 
equally true that Satan, being the more pow- 
erful personage, and having suffered more, 
had to absorb more of the interest, not merely 
of the poet, but of the reader. It is equally 
true that, being the real hero, — for all attempts 
to prove that he is not are factitious and inef- 
fectual, — he ought not to pass out of the ac- 
tion so early as he does ; yet this, again, was 
necessitated by the theme, which demanded 
that the expulsion of Adam and Eve should 
end the poem, and yet be preceded by an elab- 
orate setting forth of the scheme of ultimate 
salvation for the human race. Thus Books XL 



WORKS 199 

and XII. — it will be remembered that origi- 
nally the poem consisted of ten books, and 
that the present arrangement was effected by 
dividing Books VII. and X. — necessarily let 
the interest down almost to the lowest level at 
which Milton's genius could fly. Yet interest 
is not a primary essential of a work of art, and 
it may be questioned whether Milton does not 
deserve as much credit for extricating himself 
out of a difficult situation as he has received 
blame for a condition of things which he did 
not create. 

Again, it is easy enough to point out the 
lack of humor involved in making the angels 
wear armor and fight with cannon ; but the 
ability to discover the humorous quality in- 
herent in these conceptions is purely modern. 
Milton could not have had it, any more than 
Raphael. And if we are determined to fault the 
incongruous in poetry, why do we not fall foul 
of Shakspere for making the ghost of Ham- 
let's father revisit the glimpses of the moon 
clad in complete steel ? Nor could Milton have 
foreseen a time when men would doubt whether 
God would ever have allowed Satan to ruin 



200 JOHN MILTON 

the innocent first pair, when they would ques- 
tion the propriety of representing Death as the 
child of Satan and Sin, when they would subject 
the speeches of God the Father to nice meta- 
physical examination, based on the acquired 
knowledge of two additional centuries, and 
would demand of the angels conduct similar to 
that of human beings under similar circum- 
stances. He could hardly have thought that 
he would ever be taken to task for making 
Adam wrangle with Eve, when he was only 
following Scripture, which he could no more 
have doubted or deserted than he could have 
doubted the existence of a personal God war- 
ring with a personal devil. He could, indeed, 
depart from orthodox Protestantism so far as 
to become a semi-Arian ; but he could not desert 
anthropomorphism, or develop into a pantheist 
on the score of Copernicanism, however much 
he might be in sympathy with the latter. He 
was the child of his age, and, as Dr. Garnett 
well contends, is all the greater because he is 
representative. Finally, at least, Milton could 
not have foreseen that an age that had aban- 
doned, in large part, his theology and cosmog- 



WORKS 20 I 

ony would ever be unjust enough not to make 
the same allowances for him that it makes will- 
ingly for Dante and Homer. In other words, 
he could never have fancied that a day would 
come when the critic would cease to be a judge, 
and would become a chameleon. 

It may, then, be concluded that a majority 
of the defects that critics have pointed out in 
" Paradise Lost " are inherent in the subject 
or in the age and country of which the poem 
is representative. But they are obviously far 
more than counterbalanced by merits, partly 
belonging to the poet and his art, partly to his 
subject and period. Milton's style is his own, 
also his rare learning, which has enabled him 
to enrich his poem with treasures gathered from 
every age and cHme ; his own, too, is his mighty 
imagination, which carries him so easily to the 
heights of the sublime, as well as his tremen- 
dous power of invention, technically speaking, 
which enables him to arrange and to expand 
his multifarious materials. His theme and his 
age counted, nevertheless, for much. No mere 
terrestrial action could have given scope for 
the almost superhuman grandeur of his poem ; 



202 JOHN MILTON 

no age and country not Protestant could have 
infused into it so much mighty energy. The 
mediaeval and Catholic Dante, as critics have 
pointed out, was more truly an inventor than 
Milton was ; but he could not have invented a 
theme of such compelling power. In " Para- 
dise Lost "the theme, the age, and the poet 
conspired as they have rarely done in the his- 
tory of the world's literature ; and if the result 
is not a universal poem like the " Iliad," — 
that is, a poem covering so many phases of our 
finite life that it seems to us universal, — it is 
at least the subHmest work of the imagination 
to be found in any language. 

But here, again, fortune has been somewhat 
unkind to Milton. Not only has his Puritan- 
ism alienated many modern readers from him, 
especially extreme latter-day Anglicans, but 
the highest quality of his work, its sublimity, 
has militated against its becoming truly popu- 
lar. Human nature, whatever its merits and 
capacities, rarely loves the heights and cannot 
long remain upon them. It is this failing in his 
readers, rather than the fact that he is the most 
learned of poets, and thus often difficult to com- 



WORKS 203 

prehend, though that also counts, that chiefly 
Hmits the number of Milton's lovers to-day. It 
also leads otherwise competent critics to com- 
mit the blunder of maintaining that Milton is 
greater as a poet in youthful works like 
** Comus " and " Lycidas " than in his noble 
epic. This is like maintaining that a man in his 
prime is inferior, in the totality of his powers, 
to what he was when he was a charming youth. 
They simply mean in the last analysis that 
charm and beauty fused with budding strength 
attract them more than grandeur and sheer sub- 
limity ; though they would do well to observe 
that in the Eden portions of "Paradise Lost" 
charm and beauty, fused with a strength which 
is absolutely sure of itself, are present in full 
measure. Where, for example, in *' Comus " or 
" Lycidas " shall we find a passage fuller of 
the true richness of poetry than this from the 
fourth book of the epic (11. 246-256).? — 

" Thus was this place, 
A happy rural seat of various view : 
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balms ; 
Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind, 
Hung amiable — Hesperian fables true, 



204 JC>HN MILTON 

If true, here only — and of delicious taste. 
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks 
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed, 
Or palmy hillock ; or the flowery lap 
Of some irriguous valley spread her store, 
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose." 

It would be, perhaps, rash to say that no such 
matchlessly charming effect as the close of the 
last verse of this passage can be found in 
" Comus " or " Lycidas " ; but, after having 
edited both poems with some care, I cannot 
recall one. 

Still it is obvious that sublimity is a rarer 
quality of genius than charm ; or, to express it 
concretely, that " Lycidas " has more rivals in 
literature than *' Paradise Lost" has. But judg- 
ment tells us that that which is rare and at the 
same time positively powerful deserves the high- 
est admiration we can give, and on this verdict 
of judgment depend not only the hierarchies 
of art, but also the central truths of reHgion. 

If now it be asked how a reader can over- 
come his limitations and learn to appreciate 
"Paradise Lost" with something like justice, 
a fairly satisfactory answer can at once be 



WORKS 205 

given. He must learn, in the first place, that a 
work of art should not be made the object of 
his religious or scientific or other preconcep- 
tions or prejudices; this is only to say that he 
should observe toward a poet the courtesy that 
the rules of good society teach him to observe 
in intercourse with his neighbors. He must not 
stand ready to do battle for his opinions on 
religion, politics, and the like until they are 
vitally assailed, which hardly ever happens in 
connection with a true work of art. Even in 
" Paradise Lost " the passages in which Milton 
can be justly charged with seeking positively to 
inculcate Puritan principles and opinions and to 
attack the tenets of others are few and far be- 
tween ; yet, if one were to judge from the way 
the critics talk, one would think that the great 
poet was forever coming down from the Aonian 
Mount in order to ascend the pulpit. 

In the second place, the reader must, as far 
as possible, make his own imagination assist 
that of the poet, or at least, as Mark Pattison 
says, he must check all resistance to the ar- 
tist's efforts. The resistance that the lower 
stages of culture always oppose to the higher 



206 JOHN MILTON 

must be minimized by a recourse to the aids 
given in abundance by commentators and edi- 
tors, especially to such metrical aids as will en- 
able us to comprehend the wonderful technique 
of the blank verse, without a knowledge of which 
half the glory of " Paradise Lost " will be for- 
ever obscured to us. 

Finally, the tendency to shirk contact with the 
sublime must be subdued in the only possible 
way, by the resolute endeavor to live with the 
eye fixed on the heights. The best way to learn 
to appreciate '' Paradise Lost " is to read it and 
re-read it. Like all great works of art, it yields 
its choicest pleasures only to its patient students 
and lovers. One might as well expect to ex- 
haust the Mona Lisa's charm and meaning at 
a glance as to appreciate Milton's great epic 
at one reading. It is only through reading and 
re-reading that the full harmony of the periods 
will be borne upon the ear ; that the majestic 
involution of the diction will become a help 
rather than a hindrance to the imagination ; 
that the spirit will breathe freely in the courts 
of heaven or amid the conclaves of hell ; that the 
pride and subtlety of the Fiend, the majestic 



WORKS 207 

innocence of our first parents, the single-hearted 
loyalty of the angels, and the ineffable purity of 
the Son of God will become clearly revealed to 
us ; that, finally, the tremendous import of the 
drama and the marvellous and entire adequacy 
of the poet to its handling will hold us spell- 
bound yet not dazed, and make the mighty 
poem our possession for always, our /crrifMa ek 
aeL. 

But, some one may say, though we may be 
willing to grant that foreigners have been, 
with few exceptions, unjust to Milton from 
the days of Voltaire's " Candide " to those of 
M. Scherer's essay, seemingly overpraised by 
Matthew Arnold, and though we may grant 
that Milton is a great poetic artist and that 
he made the most of his theme, we are not 
prepared to accept Schopenhauer's conten- 
tion that interest is not a prime necessity of a 
work of art and we find ''Paradise Lost" dull. 
What reply is one to make to this frank con- 
fession and avoidance ? The only reply I can 
make is that I do not see how a powerful 
presentation of the story of man's fall and 
its attendant events can fail to be interesting 



208 JOHN MILTON 

to a Christian believer or even to any one who 
has concerned himself with man's origin and 
the chief explanations that have been given 
of it, except on the supposition, which I fear 
to be a true one, that men and women of 
certain classes are developing a growing habit 
of putting everything that pertains to the 
theory or the contemplation of religion to one 
side, whether it is to be taken up on one day 
out of seven or not at all. That such a habit 
exists among cultivated Anglo-Saxons, espe- 
cially in this country, will not be denied, I 
think, by any competent observer. In spite 
of recent efforts to improve and increase the 
study of the Bible, that book is being less and 
less read by sophisticated people, who are, in 
my judgment, precisely the readers that find 
Milton dull. But if theology and the Bible, 
and talk or thought on religious subjects, are 
put aside for one day in the week or for good 
and all, it is no wonder that readers should 
find the theme of '' Paradise Lost " dull. And 
if scientific views of the universe have on 
many minds the effect of alienating them 
from poetry, as they confessedly had on Dar- 



WORKS 209 

win's, the case of Milton, who holds both by 
theology and by poetry, appears to be well- 
nigh hopeless. If he seems dull because we 
have relegated his subject-matter to the care 
of professional preachers, just as we have 
relegated the common and statute law to pro- 
fessional lawyers, or if he seems dull because 
his theory of the universe is childish in our 
eyes, then there is no way of rehabilitating 
him except first rehabilitating his readers. 

And yet on no other suppositions than 
those just made can one readily or fairly ac- 
count for Milton's seeming dull. Certainly for 
any one who accepts Christian teaching with 
regard to the fall and redemption of man, the 
superbly poetical and powerful presentation 
of the council of the fiends, of the war in 
heaven, of the bliss of our first parents and 
of their temptation, must possess a perma- 
nent interest unless our acceptance of these 
great themes be a purely conventional one. 
This means that at least three-fourths of the 
poem ought to possess permanent interest, 
which is a proportion that we shall find few 
epics exhibiting, even though we throw to 



210 JOHN MILTON 

the winds Poe's theories with regard to the 
proper length of poems. On the other hand, 
just as large a portion of the poem ought 
to prove interesting to the reader who ap- 
proaches it as he does the ** Iliad " with a dis- 
engaged mind. Thus, when all is said, the 
admirer of *' Paradise Lost " is not obliged 
in its support to fall back upon the conten- 
tion that interest is not a matter of primary 
concern in a work of art. It will indeed be 
well for any reader to develop his taste so 
that the rhythmical, descriptive, and struc- 
tural beauties of a poem will be his first con- 
cern ; but there is no reason why he should 
not enjoy ** Paradise Lost " long before he has 
attained this consummation. If, however, he 
indulges his analytical faculties as M. Scherer 
and so many other critics have done, he will 
be certain to put it out of his power to enjoy 
Milton to the full. Indeed, I am simple- 
minded enough to fail to perceive why such 
analysis does not kill nearly all poetry ; for 
it is an analysis that starts out with the as- 
sumption that a thing should be what it obvi- 
ously could not have been. A certain amount 



WORKS 211 

of seventeenth-century Protestant theology was 
absolutely necessary to Milton's epic ; but 
with the theology went along a theme of tran- 
scendent human interest and compelling power 
for all who accepted the theology then, or for 
all who are willing to realize it imaginatively 
now. Yet our critics, French and English, 
fall foul of this necessary element and rend 
it and then prance off proudly as a dog does 
with his bone. And they actually expect us 
to applaud them. But enough of this. 

We must now pass to a brief consideration of 
what Milton borrowed from other poets in order 
to adorn '* Paradise Lost." As might have been 
expected, he has been often charged with plagi- 
arism, although no one since Lauder has been 
bold enough to forge his proofs to sustain the 
charge. With regard to the Bible and the 
classics little need be said. They are the open 
property of modern poets, and Milton drew from 
them whenever he wished. It is very difficult 
to tell how much he borrowed from his more 
immediate predecessors. According to Masson's 
count the number of the books that are sus- 
pected of having given him hints is so large as 



212 JOHN MILTON 

to be positively ridiculous.^ The fall of man was 
naturally a sufificiently attractive subject to have 
been treated time and again in literature before he 
wrote. He had heard enough and read enough 
about it before he finally chose it as a theme, to 
have managed it much as he did without the aid 
of a single author during the period of actual 
composition ; but it is not unlikely that, student 
as he was, he deliberately, at one time or another, 
turned over many old books or had them read 
to him in order that he might learn how other 
writers had treated the subject. From this 
reading he may consciously or unconsciously 
have received hints for his own work ; but this 
is largely a matter of conjecture. It is likely 
enough, since " Paradise Lost " was first con- 
ceived as a drama, that the Scriptural play of 
the Italian, Giovanni Battista Andreini (1578- 
1652), entitled "Adamo" (161 3), may, as Voltaire 
first suggested, have turned Milton's thoughts to 

1 Many of the works here referred to have been inaccessible 
to me, so that I have been forced to rely on Masson's treatment 
of the topic of Milton's indebtedness and on my own experience 
in investigating similar topics. I am incHned to be sceptical 
in nine out of ten cases of supposed plagiarism. I have in- 
vestigated the Vondel charges. 



WORKS 213 

the subject, although there seems to be not a 
great deal of proof that it did. Or he may have 
known the " Adamus Exul " of Grotius or some 
Latin verses by Barlaeus, or any number of 
other now-forgotten performances. It is not at 
all likely that he knew anything definite of his 
English predecessor, the pseudo-Caedmon, first 
printed in 1655, when Milton was thinking chiefly 
about that far less savory character, Alexander 
Morus. It is not improbable, according to Dr. 
Garnett, a safe authority, that he got a hint for 
the idea of his diabolical conclave from the 
Italian reformer Bernardino Ochino. Yet after 
all an infernal council was a most natural start- 
ing-point for the poem, and Milton, Ochino, and 
Vondel might all have made Beelzebub second 
in command to Satan without the slightest in- 
debtedness to one another. 

The mention of the Dutch poet, Joost van den 
Vondel, reminds us, however, that he is the 
author to whom modern critics seem mostly 
determined to make Milton indebted. More 
than one book and essay have been written to 
prove the obligations of '' Paradise Lost " to the 
drama "Lucifer," pubUshed in 1654, and prob- 



214 JOHN MILTON 

ably more will be unless critics learn — an im- 
probable supposition — that while tracing the 
literary obligations of a great poet is a harm- 
less and interesting pursuit, it not infrequently 
tends to become fatuous. It is not yet proved, 
although it is, perhaps, probable, that Milton 
had Vondel's " Lucifer " read to him ; it is 
still less clear that the verbal correspondences 
between the epic and the drama ^ — most of 
which exist only in the shaping imaginations of 
the critics — are either conscious or unconscious 
obligations on the part of the later writer. 
Even the idea expressed in the famous line, 



may have been in Milton's mind long before he 
ever heard Vondel's couplet expressing the 
same notion. So, too, with the splendid lines in 
Book IV. (977-980) describing the movement of 
the angelic squadron which have been paralleled 
in " Lucifer." But granting that Milton con- 
sciously borrowed from Vondel and other poets, 
it would require the height of stupidity to deny 
that he bettered what he borrowed ; and he him- 
self has rightly contended that such appropria- 



WORKS 2 1 5 

tion is entirely admissible. The main point, 
however, to be remembered in this connection is 
that the chances are always against a poet's 
checking the flow of his creative impulse in 
order consciously and deliberately to fit into his 
verses an idea or image borrowed from any 
source whatever. If the idea or image has been 
assimilated by him, it may be unconsciously 
reproduced ; but surely a want of psychological . 
knowledge characterizes those critics who argue 
from every striking correspondence of thought 
or expression the obligation of one writer to 
another. In the sense that he reproduced what 
he had assimilated, Milton may perhaps be said 
to owe more to his fellows than most great 
poets ; but in the sense that he made his verses 
a mosaic of other men's thoughts and expres- 
sions, he is as innocent of indebtedness as his 
accusers are of humor and common sense. 

But we have been defending Milton long 
enough, and it is time to say something more 
positive about his masterpiece. Yet, after all, 
what can be said that is either new or ade- 
quate .'* An analysis of so well-known a poem 
would be out of place, an introduction to it in 



2l6 JOHN MILTON 

the shape of a discussion of its cosmogony or 
its theology would be equally inappropriate 
and useless as well, since Professor Masson has 
already accomplished the task in a most thor- 
ough manner. Any adequate treatment of the 
blank verse, which remains the allurement and 
despair of all poets using the English language, 
would be impossible within the limits of this 
chapter; and the same may be said of almost 
every single topic, such as the elaborate similes, 
the felicitous employment of proper names, the 
involution of the syntax, and the like. A dis- 
cussion of the characters would be equally 
fruitless and unnecessary, besides holding by 
methods of criticism now abandoned to literary 
clubs, and we may therefore content ourselves 
with saying a few words about the rank held 
by the poem among the world's great epics. 
This is, indeed, a subject too large for full 
treatment here, and one on which critics 
are sure to disagree; but it will, at least, open 
up interesting fields for speculation. Before 
we enter upon it, however, it will be well to em- 
phasize the fact that it is to " Paradise Lost " 
that the student of the art of poetry must come 



WORKS 2 I 7 

for his most important and inspiring lessons. 
If it is not the most purely artistic, elaborate 
work in the world's literature, it probably holds 
this position in EngUsh literature. All the 
resources of the poet's art are displayed in it 
in full perfection, so far as the epic form would 
allow. The poet's imagination may flag at 
times, owing to the exigencies of his subject, 
but his artistic power never. Hence it is a mis- 
take to read the poem in selections, or to break 
off after finishing the first four books. Every 
page contains some marvel of rhythm or dic- 
tion ; nor are nine-tenths of these known to the 
reading public, which is in the habit of fancying 
that, with its short-cuts to culture, it gets at 
the heart of a classic author. How many peo- 
ple, for example, have fully realized the power 
of these lines from Book VH., in which Adam 
seeks to detain Raphael, or have gauged the 
timbre of the epithet '' unapparent " } 

^' And the great Light of Day yet wants to run 
Much of his race, though steep. Suspense in heaven 
Held by thy voice, thy potent voice he hears, 
And longer w^ili delay to hear thee tell 
His generation and the rising birth 



2l8 JOHN MILTON 

Of Nature from the unapparent Deep : 

Or, if the Star of Evening and the Moon 

Haste to thy audience, Night with her will bring 

Silence, and Sleep listening to thee will watch ; 

Or we can bid his absence till thy song 

End, and dismiss thee ere the morning shine." 

This may or may not be in the *' grand style," 
but who can wonder that it induced the arch- 
angel to prolong his stay ? 

Turning now to the relations sustained by 
Milton's epic to the other great world-poems, 
it is a commonplace to remark that it belongs 
to the class of artificial rather than national or 
natural epics. Yet it would be unjust not to 
maintain that, in so far as it embodies the spec- 
ulations and imaginings of Christendom on the 
perennially interesting and universal problems 
of man's creation and destiny, it partakes, 
through its theme, of some of the noblest and 
most inevitable features of those natural epics 
that, like the *' Iliad," seem to have been born 
to express the greatness of a race. In other 
words, not only does the tremendous import of 
its theme add greatly to the sublimity of '' Para- 
dise Lost," it actually gives it a representative 



WORKS 219 

Standing that is perhaps nearer to the " IHad " 
than that of the "^neid" or ''The Divine 
Comedy." That such a claim should be made 
for it with regard to Dante's great poem will 
probably excite surprise in this day of the 
Italian's elevation over his English peer ; but 
the fact remains that, although the spirit of 
Dante's " Comedy " represents the spirit of 
mediaeval Catholicism, its form and substance 
are mainly Dante's, and, while reflecting the 
greatest glory upon him as an inventor, lack 
much of the inevitableness that attaches to por- 
tions, at least, of *' Paradise Lost," to a greater 
degree than to any other great epic since the 
'' Iliad." 

As a work of conscious art, however, " Par- 
adise Lost " must after all take its stand with 
the epics of Virgil, Dante, Tasso, and their 
fellows; it is par excellence a literary epic 
and cannot possess the charm of unconscious 
perfection to be found in Homer, or that of 
naive simplicity and directness to be found in 
'' Beowulf " and the '' Nibelungenlied." But 
it must be observed that it does not follow 
that, because a poem is the result of conscious 



220 JOHN MILTON 

art, it is therefore inferior to a poem that 
springs almost naturally into existence, Hke 
a ballad or an epic founded on lays. Many 
readers and critics in this century suffer from 
what may be called ''the heresy of the 
natural." Man has often supplemented and 
bettered nature in the past and he will con- 
tinue to do so ; on the other hand, there are 
occasions when he cannot touch nature with- 
out spoiling her. He can take an uninviting 
spot and turn it into a bower of beauty ; 
but he lowers the sublimity of the Alps by 
rendering them habitable. It will not do, 
therefore, to make a shibboleth of the word 
''natural." In literature the so-called "nat- 
ural " products have their own charm and 
power, which may or may not surpass those 
of consciously artistic products. For exam- 
ple, the " Beowulf," which is distinctly primi- 
tive and natural, would be considered equal 
in charm and power to " Paradise Lost " only 
by some philological pedant or some hope- 
less theorist. On the other hand, " Para- 
dise Lost," with all its grandeur of theme 
and execution, could be considered equal to 



WORKS 221 

the ''Iliad," with its natural grandeur of un- 
conscious dignity, its divine charm, its utter 
inevitableness, only by a reader doomed to 
make Homer's acquaintance through a trans- 
lation, or by one disposed to make the sub- 
lime outrank all other qualities of poetry. 
But ''Beowulf" is as natural as the "Iliad," 
perhaps more so; yet while a touch of extra 
art would spoil the latter poem, the former 
might stand many such touches without loss. 
In the matter of syntax alone the " natural " 
Anglo-Saxon epic suffers greatly, not only in 
comparison with the modern English epic, — 
for Milton's involved syntax, though it has re- 
pelled many a reader, is one of the special 
glories of his poetic art, — but when set beside 
the Greek. There had either been poets be- 
fore Homer, just as there had been great men 
before Agamemnon, or Greek syntax sprang 
ready armed from the former's brain ; Eng- 
hsh syntax emerged more like Vulcan than 
like Minerva from the brain of the author of 
the "Beowulf." Hence consistent "natural- 
ists" ought to prefer "Beowulf" to the "Iliad," 
which they probably do. 



222 JOHN MILTON 

Granting now that " Paradise Lost " must 
perhaps rank below either of the Homeric 
epics, but maintaining that it surpasses even 
them in subHmity of imagination and all other 
of the natural epics in most essentials, let us 
endeavor to weigh it with its kindred poems 
of conscious art. It is obviously difficult to 
weigh it with works not kindred, such as 
Shakspere's dramas or lyrics. A great epic 
is certainly a rarer production than a great 
drama or lyric ; it is rarer than a great collec- 
tion of lyrics ; but it is not rarer than a 
great body of supreme dramatic work like 
the Shaksperian. The plays of Shakspere 
taken collectively must probably rank, on 
account of the universal genius displayed in 
them, above Milton's masterpiece, though 
yielding to that in sublimity and perhaps in 
artistic perfection, technically speaking. In 
other words, Shakspere's genius is superior 
to that of Milton in range, though seemingly 
not in quality. But this is only to say that 
Shakspere alone of moderns is worthy to stand 
beside — no one in my judgment can stand 
above — the immortal singer of heroic Greece. 



WORKS 223 

With regard to other dramatists and lyrists 
a decision is not so difficult. The collected 
works of none of them show universality, and 
Milton's genius in its power and range falls only 
just short of being universal. There is, there- 
fore, no room to place any dramatist or lyrist 
between him and his two great superiors. 

But has he not a superior in his own class of 
poets .'' If he has, it must be Dante. Tasso 
and Spenser may almost match him in charm, 
but obviously lack his power. Goethe is prob- 
ably superior to him in breadth and serenity of 
intelligence, but falls short in sublimity, charm, 
and artistic power. " Faust " may appeal to us 
moderns on the intellectual side more than 
" Paradise Lost " does ; but intellectual interest 
is a lower thing than artistic rapture. Victor 
Hugo on the other hand, however grandiose his 
conceptions and however marvellous his com- 
mand of his metrical instrument, — a command 
in its way worthy of being compared with that 
of Homer or of Milton, — has not the sanity 
and intellectual strength and poise necessary for 
the poet who would successfully rival Dante 
or Milton. Of our great Chaucer and those 



224 JOHN MILTON 

often admirable narrative poets beneath him in 
the scale, of whom most literatures can boast a 
few, it is almost needless to speak in this con- 
nection. But a word must be said about 
Virgil. In greatness of theme, in conscious 
artistic mastery, in the perfection of metrical 
workmanship, in general intellectual balance 
and power, the great Roman is almost, if not 
quite, the equal of the great Englishman. In 
point of charm he seems to be superior; in 
point of subHmity and sheer energy he is clearly 
inferior. The balance will therefore tip in 
accordance with the relative importance allowed 
to charm and power in the mind of the critic. 
And when all is said, this is the safest con- 
clusion to be reached when Milton is balanced 
against his great predecessor, Dante. The two 
poets have, of course, been compared ever since 
the masterpiece of the later became well known ; 
but it cannot fairly be said that their respective 
merits have yet been thoroughly settled. It is 
quite true that if a show of critical hands were 
made Dante would bear off the palm. He also 
stands better than Milton the test of cosmo- 
politan success. But Milton's Protestantism has 



WORKS 225 

been in his way in Roman Catholic countries 
more than Dante's Catholicism has been in his 
way in Protestant countries, so that the cosmo- 
politan test is not quite fair. There have been 
in this century several reactions, religious, 
literary, and artistic, toward mediaevalism that 
count in Dante's favor now, but may not weigh 
greatly with the twentieth century. Besides, 
Milton has never lacked lovers Hke Landor, who 
doubted " whether the Creator ever created one 
altogether so great as Milton," or critics hke Dr. 
Garnett, who, in his '' History of Italian Litera- 
ture," speaking of Dante as the more represent- 
ative man, is nevertheless inclined to rate Mil- 
ton the more highly as a poet. He has not even 
lacked sympathetic women admirers, like Sara 
Coleridge, who actually seems to have argued 
with Mr. Aubrey de Vere by letter as to the Ital- 
ian's inferiority to the EngHshman. It is need- 
less to say that the Irish poet was not convinced, 
finding in Dante a charm, a humane quahty, a 
philosophy, that he could not discover in Milton. 
With regard to Dante's superiority from the 
point of view of charm, as well as from that of 
human interest, no counter plea shall be entered 
Q 



226 JOHN MILTON 

here. There is no passage in "Paradise Lost" 
so human, so touching, as the incident of Fran- 
cesca da Rimini. There is probably no passage 
so exquisitely beautiful as that about the Siren 
in the " Purgatorio." In originality of concep- 
tion, in the power to paint minutely vivid 
pictures, in his appreciation of the grandeur and 
sweetness of love, Dante surpasses Milton, and 
the latter's admirers may as well admit the fact 
gracefully. They may also admit Dr. Garnett's 
claim that Dante is the more representative man, 
which does not necessarily mean the greater 
man ; and they can if they are minded admit 
Mr. de Vere's contention that his work is more 
philosophical, although wherein either poet is 
nowadays entitled to be considered specially 
philosophical might puzzle any one not a Roman 
Catholic or a Puritan to tell. But when Dante's 
admirers — and who is not his admirer.? — have 
had their say, they must, it would seem, while 
rightfully asserting his strenuous dignity, admit 
that in sublimity, in the power to body forth 
tremendous conceptions, — in a word, to sound 
infinity, — he is Milton's inferior, and that thus 
very much the same balance has to be struck as 



WORKS 227 

in the case of Virgil. Do charm, vividness, 
dignity, philosophy, and the human touch out- 
weigh the grandeur of matchless sublimity, of 
superhuman power, of resistless but self-con- 
trolled energy? If we answer "yes," then we 
must put Dante next to Homer and Shakspere ; 
if we answer "no," then we must put Milton 
there. It is not a question which of the two 
poets we most love, which is our most constant 
companion; it is a question of our judgment 
as to which is greater ; and if any man wishes 
to refrain from attempting such a rash judgment, 
who shall blame him ? 

Some of us are so constituted, however, that 
we are obliged to love and admire Milton more 
than we do Dante, if, indeed, we do not go the 
whole length with Landor and proclaim him to 
be the greatest of mortal men. And we have 
something more than the qualities of sublimity 
and energy on which to rest our belief in his 
supereminent greatness. Dante, be it spoken 
reverently, has faults which his admirers mini- 
mize, and Milton has merits of which his ad- 
mirers have hardly made enough. 

There can be little question that, with all the 



228 JOHN MILTON 

advantages his human touch gives him, Dante 
is too personal ; that his very vividness of de- 
scription carries him too far. He is, at times, 
too local in his loves and hates to reach the 
proper plane of the world-poet. His very con- 
creteness, often so great a help to him, becomes 
a hindrance on occasions, as when, for exam- 
ple, at the end of the " Inferno," he has to 
describe Satan. Here he becomes grotesque, 
just where Milton is most sublime. Then, 
again, Dante's " action," technically speaking, 
is just as liable to the charge of inconsistency 
as Milton's. His idealization of Beatrice is 
quite as much to be faulted, of course from 
points of view not artistic, as Milton's ideali- 
zation of Satan, — a statement which merely 
means, in the last analysis, that critics like 
Mr. Aubrey de Vere have no right to grow 
melancholy over Milton's glorification of the 
principle of evil. Furthermore, Dante's age 
limited him, and caused him to err, every whit 
as much as Milton's age limited and injured 
him. There is a bitterness of partisanship in 
" The Divine Comedy " not to be paralleled in 
" Paradise Lost," even though we remember 



WORKS 229 

that Milton inserted those unnecessary lines 
about Limbo ; there are dreary wastes of 
mediaeval theology and philosophy in the " Pur- 
gatorio ** and " Paradiso," beside which the 
speeches of Milton's Puritan God are luminous 
with interest. But Milton's faults are empha- 
sized, while Dante's are passed over by an age 
reactionary enough to prefer BotticelU's mediae- 
val types of ascetic beauty to Raphael's glori- 
ous Renaissance types of rounded loveliness. 
With regard, now, to Milton's more positive 
merits, Dr. Garnett is seemingly right in frankly 
intimating that as poet, that is, as poetic 
artist, Milton is Dante's superior. Dante's 
diction and rhythm, his figures, his command 
of the resources of his art, are almost beyond 
praise ; but some of us think that Milton has 
slightly surpassed him in every one of these 
particulars. The Miltonic harmonies, diction, 
and figures, and, one may add, general sense 
of proportion, are unmatched in Dante, or in 
Shakspere, for that matter, for the true Mil- 
tonian, and these are most important points 
when a balance is being struck between rival 
poets. But here, again, fortune has been un- 



230 JOHN MILTON 

kind to Milton. His chief qualities, sublimity 
and energy, dazzle rather than attract men ; 
and the splendors of his art produce the same 
effect. Dante is more human, more lovable, 
more endowed with what may be called the 
intimate features of genius. Hence he will 
always band his lovers together more closely 
than Milton will. Dante societies already 
exist ; but there is no motion being made to 
concentrate interest in Milton. 

But the last, and probably the most impor- 
tant, reason for Milton's being considered infe- 
rior to Dante by so many students of literature, 
is the fact that they are usually far more stu- 
dents than lovers of the art of poetry. Dante's 
great poem is fuller of symbolical and allegori- 
cal content than Milton's is, and therefore af- 
fords more satisfaction to the inquiring and 
probing intellect. It is also much fuller of 
spiritual significance of a distinctly personal 
kind, hence it more strongly attracts such per- 
sons as make use of poetry for moral and 
spiritual stimulation. These concessions will 
doubtless seem to many to give away Milton's 
case, but not so. Intellectual satisfaction and 



WORKS 231 

spiritual stimulation ought to be found in all 
great poetry — they can be obtained from a 
deep study of ** Paradise Lost," but they are 
not the raison d'ett^e of poetical creation, nor 
the main element of true poetical enjoyment. 
Poetry must be primarily aesthetic in its appeal, 
and it is clear that objective art satisfies this 
demand better than subjective art does. Hence 
it is that I rank the great objective theme of 
"Paradise Lost" as better poetical material 
than the more subjective, personal theme of 
"The Divine Comedy." The fact that Dante 
commentators are forever talking of the inner 
meaning of his symbolism means, in the last 
analysis, that elements not poetic enter largely 
into their enjoyment of the poem. It is the 
same with the Shakspere commentators, who 
are forever discussing psychological questions 
about " Hamlet." They are very shrewd 
and interesting gentlemen, but they seldom 
know much about art — if they did they would 
discuss " Othello " more than they do " Ham- 
let." Of course this is all very rash — as rash, 
perhaps, as it would be to tell the Browning 
devotees that " Childe Roland," with its de- 



232 JOHN MILTON 

lightful mystery, is not so good a poem as the 
simple stanzas beginning '* You know we 
French stormed Ratisbon." People will con- 
tinue to the end of time to value this poem, 
and that for precisely the wrong reasons, be- 
cause they will persist in ignoring Greek, that 
is classic, standards, and in demanding mixed 
effects from the arts. They tell us that they 
get fuller results ; and so they do, — results 
fuller of ugliness and distortion than anything 
that has ever come down to us from the 
Greeks. But we seem to be landing full in 
the midst of the controversy between the ad- 
herents of classic and those of Gothic art — 
perhaps we have been in the midst of that 
controversy ever since we began to discuss the 
merits of Milton and Dante — and we may as 
well extricate ourselves while we can, leaving 
the task of forming a Milton Society to the 
next generation, which may be a little less 
mediaeval than we are. 

But, after all, is there not something of 
moral weakness in the failure of so many 
Anglo-Saxons to stand up manfully for Mil- 
ton's superiority to all save the two universal 



WORKS 233 

geniuses ? It is natural for the peoples of 
the Continent to venerate Dante the more 
highly, not only because they largely sympa- 
thize with his rehgious philosophy, but also 
because sublimity of character is not one of 
their virtues. The Anglo-Saxon, on the other 
hand, though he often sinks to the depths, is 
of all men the most capable of rising to the 
heights ; hence he ought to comprehend the 
most national of his poets. This Milton is. 
He is the literary embodiment of the sublime 
ideals that have made English liberty the dream 
of less fortunate peoples ; he is the fullest 
exponent of the heroism, the steadfastness, 
the irresistible energy, that have planted the 
British outposts amid Arctic snows and the 
islands of the Southern seas. He is the poet 
of triumphant strength ; his eye droops not 
before the Sun itself; his wings flag not in 
the rarest reaches of the upper ether. And 
yet men speaking the English tongue, and pro- 
fessing themselves to be proud of the achieve- 
ments of their race, have had the ineffable 
impertinence to speak slightingly of this mas- 
ter spirit, and of his master work. 



CHAPTER IX 

"paradise regained" and ** SAMSON 
AGONISTES " 

The two great poems — minor they are not 
in any true sense of the term — that form the 
subject of this chapter appeared in one volume 
in 1 67 1. There is reason to think that they 
were printed for Milton rather than pubHshed 
by John Starkey on his own account. At any 
rate Mr. Samuel Simmons did not figure in the 
transaction, while the Rev. Thomas Tomkyns, 
the ecclesiastical censor, gave his signature to 
the license to print with few twinges of con- 
science. With regard to the dates of compo- 
sition there is Kttle available information. If 
Milton acted immediately upon the query of 
EUwood, " But what hast thou to say of * Para- 
dise Found,' " it is not unlikely that the shorter 
epic was completed during the year 1666, or 
before " Paradise Lost " was published. As for 
234 



WORKS 235 

** Samson," no definite year can be assigned, 
but critics prefer to place it as near 1671 as 
they can, chiefly because its style is supposed 
to bear marks of old age. It is hard to say 
whether the harsh passages thus relied on as 
determining data are not the result of metrical 
experimentation on Milton's part, and equally 
hard to deny that many passages show a sur- 
prisingly youthful vigor. One may more confi- 
dently agree with the critics on psychological 
grounds. '' Samson " is the pathetic but nobly 
strenuous protest of an old man against an age 
and country that have deserted ideals precious 
to him ; it is the kind of protest to which Mil- 
ton may have worked himself slowly up, as the 
last service he could do mankind. Besides, 
having finished two epics, the aged poet may 
have felt a desire to carry out his youthful pur- 
pose of writing a drama on a Scriptural subject ; 
he had, indeed, thirty years before, considered 
the propriety of writing two dramas on the 
theme, and he may, as one may gather from 
his preface, have desired both to qualify the 
usual Puritan judgment on the drama and to 
censure the stage-plays then holding the Lon- 



236 JOHN MILTON 

don boards, as well as most of those that had 
hitherto been produced in England. Be this 
as it may, the two poems must have added to 
Milton's reputation and suggested by their nu- 
merous misprints the misfortune of their author. 
As might have been expected, critics have 
differed greatly over '' Paradise Regained." It 
is often said that Milton preferred it to *' Para- 
dise Lost," whereas he seems merely to have 
disliked to hear it slightingly treated in com- 
parison with the more elaborate poem. In this 
he was entirely right. ** Paradise Regained " is 
not, as Coleridge and Wordsworth thought, Mil- 
ton's most perfectly executed work, but it is, as 
its author seems to have perceived, thoroughly 
sui generis, a masterpiece to be judged after its 
own kind. The reading public has not taken 
to it because of a preconceived notion that as a 
sequel to ** Paradise Lost" it ought to continue 
the style and general interest of that great 
work. This, however, Milton never intended 
that it should do. He seized upon Christ's 
temptation by Satan — relying on the accounts 
given in Matt. iv. and Luke iv., particularly in 
the latter — as a parallel to the temptation of 



WORKS 237 

Eve and Adam, and resolved that in Christ's 
triumph he would shadow forth Satan's ulti- 
mate defeat and the final acquisition of Para- 
dise by Adam's race. He will have little or no 
action, but will rely in great measure upon the 
effects produced by the speeches put in the 
mouths of the protagonists. He hardly tells a 
story ; he reports an argument in the issue of 
which the sequel of the first epic is found. It 
is evident, then, that to judge the second poem 
properly, one must in many respects dissociate 
it entirely from the first, and ask one's self 
whether Milton could possibly have succeeded 
better in the task he undertook. 

It is hard to see how he could have done so, 
or how, with the materials at hand, he could 
have constructed an epic on the plan of *' Para- 
dise Lost." We need not call the sequel an 
epic at all unless we are inclined to agree with 
Masson, who follows Milton, in holding that 
there are two kinds of epic, one diffuse, the 
other brief. Neither need we look to Giles 
Fletcher's "Christ's Victory and Triumph," or 
to other poems, for Milton's model. He meant 
his second poem to be a spiritual exposition 



238 JOHN MILTON 

of a transcendent truth ; he had made his for- 
mer poem a sublime setting forth of an empy- 
rean and cosmical catastrophe. As he succeeded 
beyond expectation in his earlier task, it is idle 
to talk of the later poem as his most perfect 
work of art, for it accomplishes its purpose no 
better than " Paradise Lost " fulfils its mission, 
and it is obviously inferior in power and scope. 

But of its kind it is far more admirable than 
general readers seem to know. Even Dr. Gar- 
nett hardly does it justice when he asserts that 
it occasionally becomes jejune. From first to 
last its tone is that of poised nobility, which 
takes on at times a note of the richest elo- 
quence known to verse. Sublimity is nowhere 
to be found ; but poised nobility is no despica- 
ble substitute for it. Charm, too, is present, 
although not to the same extent as in " Para- 
dise Lost" or in ''Comus." But the peculiar 
note indicated is so perfect and so unique in 
literature, that the popular depreciation that 
has attended the poem seems to cast a sinister 
light upon Anglo-Saxon capacity to appreciate 
at least the subtler phases of the poetic art. 

As a matter of course the mere interest of 



WORKS 239 

the poem is slight. Satan, though eloquent and 
not yet stripped of his native dignity as " Arch- 
angel ruin'd," is not the wonder-compelling 
protagonist of the great epic. The victorious 
Christ is too consistently self-poised and 
confident of triumph to serve as a properly 
suffering hero, but as Dr. Garnett, whom one 
never tires of quoting, aptly says, '* It is enough, 
and it is wonderful, that spotless virtue should 
be so entirely exempt from formality and dul- 
ness." In other words, Milton makes the most 
of his two characters in the situations found for 
him in Holy Writ. He can display his con- 
structive invention far less than in " Paradise 
Lost," but, as in the latter poem, the blame must 
be laid on the theme not on the poet. He does 
display to the utmost what may be called his 
unfolding invention. The splendid panoramas 
beheld from the " specular mount " are an 
instance of this power perhaps unequalled in 
literature, and with this portion of the poem 
at least the world is familiar. The description 
of Athens is probably best known, but if it sur- 
passes that of the Parthian array and if the 
latter surpasses that of the Rome of Tiberius, 



240 JOHN MILTON 

the difference is like that between three ap- 
parently perfect autumn days. Almost every 
poetical resource is brought into play, and if 
the rhythm is less compelling, the diction less 
majestic than is the case with the sublimest pas- 
sages of *' Paradise Lost," it is because the three 
themes while royally noble were not super- 
humanly grand. The art of the later poem may 
truly be said to be perfect of its kind ; but it is 
not the supreme kind. In one respect, however, 
the poet's art has neither changed nor dete- 
riorated. The wonderful use of proper names 
in "Paradise Lost" is completely paralleled in 
"Paradise Regained." Take only the passage, 

" From Arachosia, from Candaor east, 
And Margiana, to the Hyrcanian cliffs 
Of Caucasus, and dark Iberian dales ; 
From Atropatia, and the neighboring plains 
Of Adiabene, Media, and the South 
Of Susiana to Balsara's haven." 

But the typical note of poised dignity is not 
exemplified in these lines nor in that wonder- 
fully beautiful passage, haunted literally by 

" Knights of Logres, or of Lyones, 
Launcelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore." 



WORKS 241 

Not in such truly ** oraculous gems " do we find 
the note of the poem, but rather in the simple 
diction and satisfying rhythm of lines like 
these : — 

" 111 wast thou shrouded then, 
O patient Son of God, yet only stood'st 
Unshaken ! Nor yet stayed the terror there : 
Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round 
Environed thee ; some howled, some yelled, some shrieked, 
Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou 
Sat'st unappalled in calm and sinless peace." 

Or to take a lower level and thus give our- 
selves the pleasure of another quotation from a 
work that deserved from its author the love that 
Jacob had for Benjamin, we find the note of 
poised nobility in these words of Christ : — 

"To know, and, knowing, worship God aright 
Is yet more kingly. This attracts the soul, 
Governs the inner man, the nobler part ; 
That other o'er the body only reigns, 
And oft by force — which to a generous mind 
So reigning can be no sincere delight." 

Turning now to " Samson Agonistes " we 
should notice that if it has never been a very 
popular poem, it has always been spoken of with 



242 JOHN MILTON 

the highest respect. Even Milton's Puritan 
contemporaries, though they might not have 
understood his defence of the Greek drama any 
more than some of his admirers have been able 
to understand or forgive his hypothetical change 
of heart with regard to Shakspere, would have 
been hard put to it to show how any uninspired 
writer could have produced a more essentially 
righteous and noble work of the imagination. 
Just so from Milton's day to our own it has 
been impossible, as Goethe admitted, to point to 
any piece of modern literature more thoroughly 
Greek in form and even Greek in spirit. The 
theme is Hebrew and the spirit, too, yet some- 
how the latter is also Greek in spite of the 
presence of Milton's characteristic diction. 

It may, indeed, be contended that the theme 
of '* Samson " hampered Milton less than the 
themes of any of his other great poems. It was 
exactly suited for dramatic treatment after the 
Greek fashion, and it fitted in with Milton's own 
temperament and experience. He, too, as every 
critic has pointed out, had married a wife of 
PhiUstine parentage and had suffered untold 
misery by her ; he, too, was living blind and help- 



WORKS 243 

less in a state that worshipped not the true 
God; he, too, if he could not like Samson de- 
stroy the rulers of that people, would still cherish 
the hope that the EngHsh Puritans would one 
day rise in their might and accomphsh the pious 
work. What wonder, then, that Milton should 
have turned such a theme to account in his old 
age, and how idle to suppose that Vondel's 
** Samson" influenced him appreciably. 

But the peculiar dramatic form suited Mil- 
ton almost as well as the theme. It required 
few characters, and thus his inability, which 
we noticed in " Comus," to create inevitable, 
objective personages, did him little harm. 
Samson was himself, or else incarnate Puri- 
tanism ; the chorus did not need to be person- 
alized ; and with Manoah, Delilah, the giant 
Harapha- of Gath, the officer, and the mes- 
senger, little play of character was required. 
Hence, although his weakness is perhaps ap- 
parent in a few passages, the strength and 
lifelikeness of his play are indisputably splen- 
did. With a fuller action and more characters 
it may be questioned whether he would have 
succeeded so well ; hence his choice of the 



244 JOHN MILTON 

Greek form was not only consistent with his 
developed prejudice against the looser Eng- 
lish drama, but was also a clear proof of his 
artistic prescience. 

His artistic inventiveness was also displayed 
in " Samson " in marked measure, not only 
in his use of the incident of Harapha's dis- 
comfiture, as Dr. Garnett has pointed out, but 
also in the metrical construction of the admira- 
ble choruses. 

He explained his metrical innovations in his 
preface in a luciis a non hicendo way by using 
learned Greek terms, which resolve themselves 
into the statement that he either avoids stan- 
zaic divisions, or else makes his stanzas irreg- 
ular, and that inside a stanza he adopts any 
sort of line or verse he chooses. The result of 
his procedure has been that it requires a care- 
fully trained ear to appreciate the harmonies 
of most of the choruses. To many readers 
they degenerate into prose ; but in view of the 
correctness of Milton's ear, and his unequalled 
command of rhythmical and metrical resources, 
it is unsafe for any one to pronounce any pas- 
sage prosaic. The truth is, rather, that Milton 



WORKS 245 

has far surpassed all other English poets in 
producing lyrical effects without rhymes, a 
few of which are, however, scattered through 
the poem : and that, if we fail to catch the 
harmonies hidden in his verses, the fault is 
our own. Yet it may be granted, perhaps, that 
in some cases he has followed the Italian plan 
of mixing verses of various lengths, more con- 
sistently than is advisable in English, for, 
after all, a poem is meant to be read, and the 
poet must, more or less, consult the capacities 
of his readers. 

With regard, now, to the rank of "Samson" 
among Milton's poems, there is little reason 
to agree with Macaulay in rating it below 
"Comus." Dr. Garnett inclines to put the two 
poems on a level. Pattison, after explaining 
how Dr. Johnson could think '* Samson " a 
''tragedy which only ignorance would admire, 
and bigotry applaud," followed up his own 
unsympathetic treatment of " Paradise Re- 
gained " by observing that "while, for the 
biographer of Milton ' Samson Agonistes ' is 
charged with a pathos which, as the expres- 
sion of real suffering, no Active tragedy can 



246 JOHN MILTON 

equal, it must be felt that, as a composition, the 
drama is languid, nerveless, occasionally halt- 
ing, never brilliant." Against this uncalled- 
for depreciation we may well set Goethe's 
praise, and remark that a successful treat- 
ment of any theme in the fashion of the 
Greek drama could not possibly be languid 
and nerveless. The fact, indeed, seems to be 
that, in intensity of power, " Samson " is as 
preeminent as " Paradise Lost " is in sublim- 
ity, "Paradise Regained" in poised nobility, 
and " Comus " in nobility fused with charm. 
If this be true, Milton's latest dramatic effort 
should rank above his first, though it be far 
less popular. It might almost be held that 
the "Samson" is the most intensely powerful 
of the great English tragedies except " Lear," 
which is universal in its stormy passion, while 
" Samson " is more national and individual. If 
the poem shows the signs of age, as Pattison 
maintains, it shows them as an aging gladiator 
might do — the thews and muscles stand rigidly 
out, unclothed by youthful flesh. But the 
power, if naked, is all the more conspicuous 
and impressive. 



WORKS 247 

In conclusion, let us take leave of this poem, 
as of its companion, "Paradise Regained," by 
recalling two passages typical of its spirit. The 
first is from a chorus : — 

" O, how comely it is, and how reviving 
To the spirits of just men long oppressed, 
When God into the hands of their deliverer 
Puts invincible might. 

To quell the mighty of the earth, the oppressor, 
The brute and boisterous force of violent men, 
Hardy and industrious to support 
Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue 
The righteous, and all such as honor truth! 
He all their ammunition 
And feats of war defeats. 
With plain heroic magnitude of mind 
And celestial vigor armed ; 
Their armories and magazines contemns, 
Renders them useless, while 
With winged expedition 
Swift as the lightning glance he executes 
His errand on the wicked, who, surprised, 
Lose their defence, distracted and amazed." 

Traces of senility are hardly to be discovered 
in this passage, or in the following, which 
will serve to illustrate the staple blank verse 
of the drama : — 



248 JOHN MILTON 

" But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt, 
And by their vices brought to servitude, 
Than to love bondage more than liberty — 
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty — 
And to despise, or envy, or suspect, 
Whom God hath of his special favor raised 
As their deliverer ? If he aught begin, 
How frequent to desert him, and at last 
To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds ! " 



CHAPTER X 



MILTON S ART 



It is quite obvious that a chapter with the 
above caption is a bold undertaking and one 
that is doomed from the beginning to partial 
or complete failure. Even a book would not ex- 
haust the subject of Milton's art, especially in 
these days when it would be likely to consist in 
large measure of statistical tables. Then, again, 
there is practically nothing new to be said about 
a topic upon which critics great and small have 
exhausted themselves from the days of Patrick 
Hume to those of Professor Masson. Yet to 
close a study such as the present without an 
attempt to sum up the general artistic powers 
of the great poet with whom it has dealt, would 
be to leave the whole undertaking somewhat 
in the air ; a result in which it would be cow- 
ardly to acquiesce without a struggle or at least 
a dignified effort. 

249 



250 JOHN MILTON 

But what now do we mean by saying that 
Milton was a great artist? We may mean 
many things, but we certainly mean that he 
was careful in selecting and ordering the mate- 
rials out of which he composed his works, and 
that he was particular in joining these materials 
together and in preparing them for the joining 
process. To speak more concretely, we mean 
that he took great pains with his choice and 
evolution of theme, that he thought out the 
details of his composition from a logical point 
of view, and that in addition to this care about 
the thought-matter of his poems or their sub- 
stance, he paid great attention to the word-mat- 
ter, whether from the points of view of diction, 
syntax, metrical rhythm, or harmony ; that is 
to say, to the form of his poems. This is, of 
course, a commonplace statement, but the two- 
fold division it contains will furnish us with a 
good point of departure. 

With regard to his choice of materials, Mil- 
ton, as we have observed, showed the caution 
that befits the scholar and the man, who, con- 
scious of great powers, is determined to excel 
supereminently. He was never a hasty writer. 



WORKS 251 

Up to the time of the composition of the " Epi- 
taphium Damonis," i.e. his thirty-second year, 
he had produced what is, on the whole, a small 
body of verse for a poet so gifted, and had for a 
considerable portion of it relied upon external 
stimulation to production rather than upon in- 
ward prompting. In other words, if Lawes had 
not been Milton's friend and if King had not 
died, the minor poems would not now be pre- 
ferred by some critics to ''Paradise Lost." 
During the twenty years of prose writing, com- 
puting roughly, external stimulation was again 
the rule, as is evidenced both by the pam- 
phlets and by the sonnets. '' Paradise Lost " is 
the first importa^nt work representing Milton's 
own creative impulse, and '' Samson Agonistes " 
is the second, for Ellwood suggested " Paradise 
Regained " and the theological, historical, and 
grammatical treatises are hardly to be consid- 
ered in this connection. 

As we have seen and as it has been fre- 
quently shown for the past two hundred years, 
Milton brought to bear on each subject, whether 
chosen by himself or not, the full weight of his 
learning and the full force of his conscience. 



2 52 JOHN MILTON 

We have ocular proof that he was a careful 
reviser and that he improved what he altered ; 
he packed whatever he wrote with erudition, 
sifted and fitted in to his purpose ; and he 
studied the technic and the details of his art. 
He innovated and experimented, and in short 
prefaces explained his methods of composition. 
The result is that the more minute the student, 
the more he becomes convinced that Milton 
could have given a reason for every detail of 
his work, even for his minor variations from the 
normal types of his blank verse lines. This is 
not to say that Milton composed with meticu- 
lous care when the impulse of composition was 
upon him, but that the rules of his art had be- 
come a second nature to him and that his taste 
was as perfect as a finite man's can be. In 
other words, the more one studies Milton the 
more loath one becomes to find fault with a 
passage, a line, a word, — the more one comes 
to believe that Milton as an artist is practically 
flawless. 

But we have already examined in some de- 
tail Milton's themes and have commented upon 
their evolution as well as upon the great use he 



WORKS 253 

made of the work of other men in carrying out 
his own designs. We have mentioned also, 
time and again, the power by which the sub- 
stance of his works is fused into a poetic whole 
— the power of his shaping imagination. An 
attempt to describe Milton's imagination would 
be impertinent, for it would require an almost 
equal imagination for its successful accompHsh- 
ment. It may, however, be noted that Milton's 
imagination seems to affect the substance of his 
works by limiting it to that which is noble, sub- 
lime, strenuous, or elementally pure and there- 
fore charming. Humor is thus practically 
excluded as well as the intimate human note 
to be found in Dante and Shakspere. Pathos 
and sympathy exist, as, for example, in the ex- 
quisite closing passage of " Paradise Lost " ; but 
the normal majesty of the action in each of the 
greater poems reduces these qualities to a mini- 
mum. In the same way, however much we may 
admire, with Tennyson, the paradisaic charm of 
the descriptions of Eden, we must admit that 
it is the product of an imagination that does not 
haunt the earth that lesser mortals tread. Mil- 
ton's genius moves more freely in empyrean 



254 JOHN MILTON 

and cosmical spaces, and if his imagination is 
limited as regards certain peculiarly liuman 
spheres, it is nevertheless limitless in its own 
proper domain. Hence it is that in the Pande- 
monium scenes Milton attains to a strenuous 
sublimity that is probably unrivalled in litera- 
ture. Hence, too, when his imagination utters 
itself in tropes and figures, little is definite or 
precise ; or if precision be demanded, the spa- 
tial dimensions are large or the setting in time 
is indefinite, grand, unusual, or mysterious. This 
last point may be well illustrated by two exam- 
ples taken from "Paradise Lost." 

Satan is not, with Milton, the three-faced 
monster whose arms in length are to the height 
of a giant more than the latter's stature is to 
that of Dante ; he lifts his head above the waves 

and 

" his other parts besides 

Prone on the flood, extended long and large," 

lie floating many a rood, as huge in bulk as 
Briareos or Typhon or "that sea-beast Levia- 
than." Here we see that the description is at 
first purely indefinite, and that, when a precise 
comparison is made, it is of such a nature that 



WORKS 255 

no increase of definiteness is really attained. 
So, too, with regard to the setting in time. 
The description of the splendor of Pandemo- 
nium is at first effected by means of details 
which are concrete only in appearance, and is 
then made impressive by a negative contrast 
with the grand architecture of far-away ancient 
peoples. 

" Not Babylon 
Nor grand Alcairo such magnificence 
Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine 
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat 
Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove 
In wealth and luxury." 

The latter quotation naturally leads us to con- 
sider Milton's wonderful use of proper names, 
and so carries us over from the substance of his 
poetry to its form, to its diction, syntax, and 
rhythm. 

The ability to weave proper names into artistic 
verse has always been considered a good test of 
a poet's powers. This is due in considerable 
part to the fact that we realize how difficult the 
task is and hence rejoice as much in its success- 
ful accomplishment as we do when a poet tri- 



256 JOHN MILTON 

umphs over the intricacies of the sonnet con- 
struction. Another reason for the pleasure 
given us by the Miltonic employment of proper 
names is found in the fact that they are nearly 
always full of allusive charm or power and thus 
unlock emotions previously stored up in us. 
This is perhaps the prime secret of the wonder- 
ful effects produced by such a passage as that 
already quoted from " Paradise Regained " 
beginning — 

" From Arachosia, from Candaor east," 

unless, indeed, the names are unknown to us 
and give us a sense of mysterious pleasure on 
the principle expressed by the adage, omne 
ignotum pro magnifico. There is another charm, 
too, never absent from the Miltonic roll of 
names — the charm of subtle harmony, and the 
difficulty with which this is attained enhances 
its power over us. It almost seems as if Mil- 
ton recognized these facts from his youth, for 
although his ability to use proper names culmi- 
nated in his mature poems, it is found in his ear- 
liest experiments. At least it is evident that it 
brought his erudition most happily into play. 



WORKS 257 

and that it is one of the most characteristic 
features of his style. 

With regard now to his diction in general 
there is nothing to say that is not already 
familiar. His total vocabulary is but little over 
half that of Shakspere ; but this does not mean 
much when we remember that Milton was the 
more careful artist and that whole ranges of 
vShakspere's work, such as the scenes of low 
comedy, were outside of the later poet's purview. 
Besides, Shakspere wrote in a period famous for 
the flexibility of its vocabulary, and the number 
of words employed by him that have lost cur- 
rency seems to be greater by a considerable 
amount than the number of similar words in the 
case of Milton as a poet. It is more important 
to observe that if Milton's poetic diction does 
not, like Shakspere's, suggest the idea of lavish 
affluence, it never suggests poverty, but rather 
just proportion. The chances are that Milton's 
knowledge of words was as large as Shak- 
spere's, but that the nature of his subjects and 
the purity of his taste limited his use to what is 
nevertheless a very considerable number. Of 
the words he does employ quite a large propor- 



258 JOHN MILTON 

tion will naturally be found to be of Romance 
or Latin rather than of Anglo-Saxon origin. 
With his themes it could not well have been 
otherwise ; besides the longer Latinistic words 
conduced to the desiderated sonorousness of his 
verse. Yet, as Masson has well shown, the 
Saxon words are those most frequently used, 
amounting in some passages to ninety per cent 
and rarely falling below seventy. Hence his 
poetry, for all his erudition, is EngHsh in its 
warp and woof. 

With regard to his syntax, the case is some- 
what different. The influence of the masses of 
Latin that he read and wrote is plainly percepti- 
ble in the closely knit, involved, and often peri- 
odic and lengthy sentences in which his mature 
works abound. This is not true of many of 
the earlier poems, such as " L' Allegro," which 
have a looseness and directness of syntactical 
arrangement that are both English and Eliza- 
bethan. Even in " Comus " and " Lycidas," 
which are by no means wanting in Latinisms, 
there are few passages that exhibit the involu- 
tion characteristic of " Paradise Lost." This 
involution is, indeed, practically unmatched in 



WORKS 259 

our poetry. It finds little place in the work 
of Shakspere, who, while capable of every sort 
of style, and full of syntactical resources, is in 
the main straightforward, not to say loose, in 
the construction of his sentences. This very 
looseness, culminating, as it often does, in an 
impetuous piling up of ideas or images, fre- 
quently renders Shakspere difficult reading, 
especially to young persons ; but his most 
tangled passages seldom strain the attention 
and the powers of comprehension of his read- 
ers as fairly normal passages of '* Paradise 
Lost" strain Milton's would-be admirers. 

There can be little doubt that this fact 
accounts for much of Milton's comparative 
unpopularity. But is his syntax at fault ? It 
surely is, if we may apply strictly Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer's principle, that it is necessary 
to economize the reader's powers of atten- 
tion. Yet this principle cannot apply to po- 
etry, if it can be shown that the poet's style, 
while straining the average reader's attention, 
really assists the capable imagination. And 
Milton's involved diction does this. His unique 
themes require a unique style. If he had dealt 



26o JOHN MILTON 

with human beings, as Shakspere did, he would 
doubtless have used a more straightforward 
style ; but he needed to get his readers away 

from 

" the smoke and stir of this dim spot 

Which men call Earth," 

and therefore he required a style not natural 
or familiar to them. Their mental energies 
once engaged, he could count the more surely 
upon stimulating their imaginations, and could 
then lift them up on the wings of his supreme 
genius into the heaven of heavens. Long, in- 
volved, periodic sentences also helped him to 
obtain sonorousness, and, as we shall soon see, 
were essential to the full success of his blank 
verse. Besides, his Latinistic syntax removed 
his style still further from that of prose, thus 
making it essentially poetic, and better capable 
of bearing the weight imposed upon it by the 
subUme structure he was intent upon rearing. 
That Milton, in particular passages, pushed 
the principle of involution too far, has, indeed, 
been admitted by his greatest admirers ; but 
against such admissions we must always set 
his own almost flawless taste. The "grand 



WORKS 261 

style " Mr. Arnold was so fond of praising, 
would not have wholly disappeared from 
" Paradise Lost " had that poem been written 
in a straightforward, uninvolved manner, but 
its occurrence would have been much rarer ; 
it certainly would not have been found on 
every page. 

But an example will prove more than sev- 
eral pages of critical exposition. Let the 
reader imagine the following passage, or any 
similar one, stripped of its involution, and 
divided up into comparatively short, straight- 
forward sentences ! 

" Not that fair field 
Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers, 
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Uis 
Was gathered — which cost Ceres all that pain 
To seek her through the world — nor that sweet grove 
Of Daphne, by Orontes and the inspired 
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise 
Of Eden strive ; nor that Nyseian isle 
Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham, 
Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove, 
Hid Amalthea, and her florid Son, 
Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye ; 
Nor, where Abassin kings their issue guard. 



262 JOHN MILTON 

Mount Amara (though this by some supposed 

True Paradise) under the Ethiop line 

By Nilus' head, enclosed with shining rock, 

A whole day's journey high, but wide remote 

From this Assyrian garden, where the Fiend 

Saw undelighted all delight, all kind 

Of living creatures new to sight and strange." 

It will be observed that this sentence, while 
lengthy and marked by involution and strict 
syntax, is' periodic only in its first section. The 
addition of the two other sections, each begin- 
ning with *'nor," makes it, in the technical 
sense, "loose," and this is the case with many 
of the longer sentences. But Milton, who was 
as careful of his punctuation as of his spelling, 
must have had some reason for making such 
sentences trail, and it may be presumed that 
this reason is to be found in a metrical consider- 
ation. He did not wish the reader to pause 
any longer than was necessary for the purpose 
of breathing, but to go straight on and thus 
allow the passage to produce the effects of 
metrical unity. For as Wordsworth perceived 
long ago, the Miltonic blank verse does not 
move by lines but by passages of varying 



WORKS 263 

lengths. In the manipulation of such passages 
Milton is unique and supreme. They are long, 
short, and of medium length, and are infinitely 
varied in their succession ; and in their manage- 
ment, if anywhere, the secret of Milton's organ 
music is to be found. Not that individual lines 
and small groups of Hues are not harmonious 
and sonorous — for they plainly are. But the 
rhythmic and harmonic effects of these parts 
of the whole rhythmic period blend into the 
grander rhythmic and harmonic effect of the 
period itself, and our reading is faulty if it does 
not bring out this fuller and final effect. When 
we compare Milton's blank verse with that of 
most other EngUsh poets except Shakspere, 
we find either that the period hardly exists for 
us or that it exists on a much less varied and 
noble scale. For example, in Thomson the 
periods constantly include but three or four 
verses, and end at the close of a verse with a 
uniformity that Milton avoids. 

But we are now fairly upon one of the most 
fascinating and intricate problems connected 
with Milton's art, and the limits of our space 
warn us that we must be careful as to the ques- 



264 JOHN MILTON 

tions we open up. Quite an essay might be writ- 
ten upon Milton's rhythmical periods whether in 
''Paradise Lost" or in '' Lycidas." So, too, 
much may be said about his use of rhyme in 
his youthful poems as well as about his experi- 
ments with stanzas and with unstanzaic rhyme- 
less lyrics — points that have been already dealt 
with briefly elsewhere. But here only a few 
somewhat desultory remarks will be possible. 
Readers of Milton's blank verse, just as 
readers of Chaucer's couplets, must beware of 
thinking that either poet counted his syllables 
or used a metronome. Milton's normal blank 
verse line consists, it is true, of ten syllables, 
accented alternately from the second ; but he 
sometimes admits a redundant eleventh syllable 
in his epics and frequently does it in " Comus " 
and " Samson " where the verse naturally takes 
on the freedom allowed it in the drama. He 
also permits himself redundant syllables in the 
body of a verse, because his ear was satisfied if 
it got a sufficient number of stresses in a line — 
normally five — to make it fairly uniform with 
its fellows and at the same time secure the 
charm of play and variety. The verses that 



WORKS 265 

make modern readers halt are generally those in 
which an accent has been shifted since Milton's 
day, or in which a tendency to count syllables 
rather than be satisfied with an approximate 
rhythm, has baffled the inexpert reader. 
For example, the verse : 

'^ And sat as Princes whom the supreme King " 

seems prosaic until we learn that Milton in- 
tended "supreme " to be stressed on the penult. 
The verse describing Leviathan, which God 

" Created hugest that swim the ocean stream," 

confuses us until we learn that Milton meant us 
to read straight along just as if we were reading 
prose, in which case we should pass rapidly over 
the two offending syllables in the third foot. 

Finally, for in this matter we must be brief 
since Professor Masson and Mr. Bridges have 
dealt with it at length, the line 

" That invincible Samson, far renowned," 

ought, it would seem, to be read with equal 

V straightforwardness, when it will be at once 

perceived that although only four stresses are 

thus obtained, the verse will fit sufficiently well 



266 JOHN MILTON 

into its period. We shall probably not attempt, 
if we are wise, to stress **that," and we shall do 
well to remember that after all in the reading 
of blank verse, as well as of prose, not a little 
depends upon the idiosyncrasies of the reader. 
But perhaps the most important point to 
be observed about Milton's blank verse is his 
management of the caesura or pause in the 
individual line. It is in this particular that 
he best earns the title of supreme metrical 
artist of the world. Infinite variety and 
infinite resulting harmony characterize his 
manipulation of these pauses, which may fall 
almost anywhere within the limits of a line. 
The reader should train himself to observe 
their effects, and should follow his common 
sense in finding them. If he read intelli- 
gently he will be almost sure to pause where 
Milton wished him to, and if he have an ear 
capable of appreciating harmony he will often 
be tempted to pause longer than is proper, in 
order that he may admire such splendid 
rhythmical effects as this : — 

" The Ionian Gods — of Javan's issue held 
Gods I, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth." 



WORKS 267 

With regard, now, to the lyrical verse in 
general, it must be owned that, although in 
" L' Allegro," "II Penseroso," parts of " Comus," 
and one or two other early poems, Milton caught 
the melody and the swing of the Elizabethan 
octosyllabics, he was not a true singer of songs, 
but more a lyrist of the elaborate kind. His 
work is rather harmonious than melodious ; 
it is constructed, but does not flow. Great 
success has, of course, been had in the elabo- 
rate lyric, — which for Anglo-Saxons culminates, 
perhaps, in " Lycidas," " Alexander's Feast," 
and the " Ode on the Intimations of Immor- 
tality," — but it is obviously less true than 
the simple lyrics, of which one of Shakspere's 
or Burns's songs may be taken as typical, to 
the essential function of lyric poetry, which 
is the singing out of the heart of the poet. 
Milton was not made to sing out his heart ; 
hence, while he can give us the beautiful 
" Echo Song " in *' Comus," his highest and 
most characteristic work is to be found else- 
where. Yet one hesitates in pronouncing this 
judgment, for where in English literature can 
a more exquisite passage of lyrical poetry be 



268 JOHN MILTON 

found, one combining more of the charm of 
well-chosen rhymes and melodiously flowing 
verses, than at the close of " Comus " ? 

Side by side with Milton's inability to sing 
out his own heart must be set his compara- 
tive inability to body forth, in dramatic form, 
the thoughts and feelings of others. We have 
already referred to this limitation of his gen- 
ius in connection with " Comus " and ** Sam- 
son." Curiously enough, although he is not 
a simple lyrist, and thus is not able to sing a 
perfect song, it is to his possession of certain 
of the characteristics of a true lyrist that his 
failure as a dramatic poet is due. Milton him- 
self, or some phase of his character, speaks 
through all his personages, but when one's 
personality speaks, one is, to a certain extent, 
a lyrist. Hence it is that Milton belongs to 
that class of quasi-dramatists of whom Mr. 
Theodore Watts-Dunton treats, in his admira- 
ble article on "Poetry" in the "Encyclopaedia 
Britannica." He was greater than the simple 
lyrists in that he could not help concerning 
himself with the fortunes of others, but he was 
still enough of a lyrist always to be mindful, 



WORKS 269 

consciously or unconsciously, of himself when- 
ever he attempted dramatic work. In other 
words, he could not, any more than Dante, 
attain the objectiveness of Homer, Shakspere, 
and Chaucer at his best. But at times he 
came near doing this, perhaps most conspicu- 
ously in the speeches of Satan and Christ in 
"Paradise Regained," and there is always 
such tremendous power in his conception and 
representation of his characters, that his fail- 
ure on the score of objectivity of treatment 
is almost overlooked. Indeed, it is not quite 
certain whether the power of representing 
characters objectively, i.e. dramatically, is per 
se greater than the power of representing them 
epically, with an infusion of lyrical passion. 
The main test in such cases must be the rarity 
of the power, and, on the whole, the thoroughly 
great quasi-dramatists are not more numerous 
than the thoroughly great dramatists. 

Nor is it absolutely clear that the universality 
of range and power that we commonly attribute 
to Homer and Shakspere alone is, from the 
point of view of art, superior to stupendous 
power reahzing itself in sublime and noble crea- 



2/0 JOHN MILTON 

tions. After all the universality is more appar- 
ent than real ; and the limitations observable 
in connection with supreme power of the Mil- 
tonic order, are often self-limitations. In other 
words, it is as true to say that Milton would not 
have written many of Shakspere's scenes as 
that he could not have written them. In the 
preceding pages deference has been paid to 
current critical opinion by placing Milton below 
the universal poets ; but sometimes this seems 
to be an injustice to him, since, in Landor's 
words, it is doubtful whether God ''ever created 
one altogether so great as Milton." Be this as 
it may, we should remember that in limiting his 
universality, reference is made chiefly to the 
range of his work from the point of view of 
its contents, not from the point of view of its 
style or form. Neither Homer nor Shak- 
spere is universal from the latter point of 
view. Homer is epic and dramatic in a su- 
pereminent way, but he is not thus great as a 
lyrist. Shakspere is supreme as a dramatist 
and lyrist, but his narrative poetry, beautiful 
as it is, does not place him among the truly 
great writers of epic. 



WORKS 271 

Closely connected with this matter of Milton's 
lack of universality is a quality of his work that 
demands special mention — his virility. While 
it is a slander to represent Milton as incapable of 
appreciating woman, it is quite true to say that 
she plays no exalted part in his work — for Eve 
before her fall is practically extra-human — and 
that the poet himself is above all characterized 
by virility. The treatment of women in the 
youthful poems and in some of the sonnets, 
prevents us from saying broadly that Milton 
could not successfully introduce the sex into 
his poetry ; but it is obvious that one of the 
specially charming features of the Shakspe- 
rian and Homeric creations is wanting to his 
work. Here, again, fortune has been unkind 
to Milton, for the world, ever since his day, 
has been paying more and more honor to 
women, until it almost looks as if they had 
ousted, or would soon oust, man from his posi- 
tion as the main subject-matter of literature. 
As a result women, who seem to be the chief 
readers to-day, do not as a rule care for Milton 
— sublimity of character not being one of their 
virtues any more than it is of the continental 



2/2 JOHN MILTON 

nations. Hence it is almost idle to hope that 
Milton can ever become truly popular until 
women are educated up to the conception and 
realization of sublimity, as they surely will be. 
Meanwhile it will be perhaps not impertinent 
to ask whether, from the point of view of 
art, Milton's superhuman personages may not 
be put in the scales with Shakspere's men and 
women and balance them. The one set of 
characters is as unique as the other, and it 
is mainly personal preference that makes it so 
easy for the average reader to decide between 
them. 

But it is time to draw this chapter and this 
book to a conclusion, and this may be not inap- 
propriately done by proposing and attempting 
to answer a query with regard to the two su- 
preme poets whom it is England's imperish- 
able glory to have given to the world. The 
query is — Can an unmistakably Shaksperian 
passage in the " grand style " be set beside an 
equally unmistakable Miltonic passage in the 
"grand style" and the distinguishing notes be 
concretely and adequately registered ? If they 
can be, the reader will have one of those touch- 



WORKS 273 

Stones Matthew Arnold was fond of using, or 
rather one of those tuning-forks, that will enable 
him to contrast the two poets when at the 
highest reaches of their art and to determine 
when each falls short of his supreme work. 
Such a practical test thoroughly applied will 
conduce to more adequate knowledge and more 
perfect love of the two master-poets than the 
mere perusal of any number of critical lucubra- 
tions. It is, of course, idle to hope that any 
such unfailing test can be given in these pages, 
but one can perhaps be adumbrated. 

Let us take two Shaksperian passages and 
two Miltonic ones. 

The Prologue to " Troilus and Cressida " 
opens thus : — 

" In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece 
The princes orgulous, their high blood chafed, 
Have to the port of Athens sent their ships, 
Fraught with the ministers and instruments 
Of cruel war." 

Othello's last speech of consequence runs in the 
main thus : — 

" I pray you, in your letters, 
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, 

T 



274 JOHN MILTON 

Speak of me as I am ; nothing extenuate, 

Nor set down aught in maHce : then must you speak 

Of one that loved not wisely but too well ; 

Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought 

Perplex^ in the extreme ; of one whose hand, 

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away 

Richer than all his tribe ; of one whose subdued eyes, 

Albeit unused to the melting mood, 

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees 

Their medicinal gum. Set you down this ; 

And say besides, that in Aleppo once. 

Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk 

Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, 

I took by the throat the circumcised dog. 

And smote him, thus." 

Against these unmistakably Shaksperian pas- 
sages let us set these from *' Paradise Lost." 

" And now his heart 
Distends with pride, and, hardening in his strength. 
Glories : for never, since created Man, 
Met such embodied force as, named with these. 
Could merit more than that small infantry 
Warred on by cranes — though all the giant brood 
Of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined 
That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side 
Mixed with auxiliar gods ; and what resounds 
In fable or romance of Uther's son. 



WORKS 275 

Begirt with British and Armoric Knights ; 
And all who since, baptized or infidel, 
Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, 
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, 
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore 
Where Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
By Fontarabbia.''' 

And again : — 

" Yet not the more 
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt 
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, 
Smit with the love of sacred song ; but chief 
Thee, Sion. and the flowery brooks beneath, 
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, 
Nightly I visit : nor sometimes forget 
Those other two equalled with me in fate, 
So were I equalled with them in renown, 
Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, 
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old : 
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers ; as the wakeful bird 
Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid. 
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year 
Seasons return ; but not to me returns 
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn. 
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, 
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine ; 
But cloud instead and ever-during dark 



2/6 JOHN MILTON 

Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men 
Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair, 
Presented with a universal blank 
Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased, 
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out." 

Now what is one to say of these contrasted 
passages, or rather, what is one not to say of 
them ? How perfectly supreme each is, and 
yet how different ! And how many artistic 
qualities may be pointed out in each ! Is it 
not idle, then, to attempt to differentiate them ? 
Probably it is ; yet are not superb and glorious 
affluence, and gathered-up human strength, 
and piercing human sympathy the distinguish- 
ing notes of these, and most other great Shak- 
sperian passages ; while sublime nobility and 
godlike poise of reticent power are the dis- 
tinguishing notes of these and most other 
great Miltonic passages ? Does not Shak- 
spere always address us in the infinitely varied 
voice of the ideal and perfect man, and Milton 
in "that large utterance of the early gods"? 
It is the noontide Renaissance set over against 
an age that never existed, an age characterized 
by a blending of the best characteristics of 



WORKS 277 

the Greek and the Hebrew. Shakspere is the 
full blushing rose of human genius in its total- 
ity ; Milton is the stately, pure, noble lily of 
human genius on its spiritual and ideal side. 
Let us give our best love to the one or the 
other ; but let us reverence both with all our 
hearts and souls. 



INDEX 



A. 

Addison, Joseph, 57, 195. 
Agar (Mrs.), Anne Milton, 19, 

120. 
Alexandrian idyllists, 120, 130, 

^31^ 139-140, 151-152. 
Andreini, G. B., his " Adamo," 

212. 
Aristotle, 62, 77. 
Arnold, Matthew, 57, 91, 207, 

261, 273; his " Thyrsis," 132, 

^2,3, 138. 
Arthur, King, Milton's pro- 
posed epic on, 17, 78, 152, 

194. 

B. 
Bacon, Lord, 117, 163. 
Bain, Prof. C. W., 74 note. 
Barloeus, 213. 

Barntield, Richard, 62, 125. 
Baron, Richard, 172. 
Baroni, Leonora, i6. 
Barron, Robert, 34. 
Beaumont, Francis, 85. 
Beaumont, Joseph, 129. 
"Beowulf," 219-221. 
Bion, 130; his "Lament for 

Adonis," 137. 
Bossuet, 160. 
Bridges, Robert, 265. 



Bridgewater, Earl of, 97, 98, 
99, lOI. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, 163. 

Browne, William (of Tavis- 
tock), 86, 106, 139; his "In- 
ner Temple Masque," 103, 
114; his " Britannia's Pasto- 
rals," 114 note. 

Browning, Robert, 3, 14, 57; 
his "Childe Roland," 231. 

Bryskett, Ludovick, his pas- 
toral on Sidney, 137, 142. 

Bucer, Martin, 168. 

Bullen, A. H., 85. 

Burke, Edmund, 36, 57. 

Burns, Robert, 267. 

Burton, Robert, his "Anatomy 
of Melancholy," 81-82, 84- 
85, 87, 88. 

Butler, Samuel, 67. 

Byron, Lord, 8, 13, 14, 57. 

C. 

Csedmon (pseudo), 213. 
Castiglione, B., his "Alcon," 

137- 
Chappell, William, 8. 
Charles I., 12, 20, 21, 36, 37, 

2,2>, 46, 123, 1 71-172. 
Chateaubriand, 164. 



279 



28o 



INDEX 



Chaucer, Geoffrey, 14, 68, 108, 

125, 223, 269. 
Christina, Queen of Sweden, 

176. 
Cleveland, John, 7, 127, 129. 
Cobbett, William, 49. 
Coleridge, Sara, 225. 
Coleridge, S. T., 236. 
Collins, William, 57, 86; his 

" Passions," 85. 
Corbet, Bishop, 124. 
Cowley, Abraham, 57; his elegy 

on Crashaw, 149. 
Cowper, W^illiam, 57, 77; his 

translations of Milton's Latin 

verses quoted, 3 note, 4 note, 

64 note, 151 note, 153. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 20, 24, 25, 43, 

52, 176, 188. 

D. 

Dante, 14, 52, 201, 202, 223, 
224-233 (compared with 
Milton), 253, 255, 269; his 
"Divine Comedy," 48, 108, 
195, 219. 
Darwin, Charles, 208. 
Davis, Miss, 30-31, 
De Quincey, Thomas, 164. 
Derby, Countess of, 96-98, 
De Vere, Aubrey, 225, 226, 228, 
Diodati, Charles, 5, 6, 17, 18, 
64, 74, 76, 134,152-153, 187. 
Donne, John, 66, 67, 
Dowden, Prof, Edward, 2iZ. 
Dryden, John, 8, 51, 57, 124, 
125, 195; his "Alexander's 
Feast," 65, 267; his ode on 
Mrs. Killigrew, 121. 
Du Moulin, Peter, 41, 176. 



! Dyer, John, 57; his " Grongar 
i Hill," 86, 

E. 

Egerton, Lady Alice, 99, 100, 

112, 

" Eikon Basilike," 37-38, 
Ellwood, Thomas, 48, 234, 251. 



Fairfax, Lord, 188. 
Fergusson, Robert, his elegy on 

John Hogg, 124, 
FitzGerald, Edward, 143 note. 
Fletcher, Giles, his " Christ's 

Victory and Triumph," 237, 
Fletcher, John, 106, iii, 132; 

his " Faithful Shepherdess," 

104, 1 1 3-1 14; his "Nice 

Valour," 85. 
Fletcher, Phineas, 68. 

G. 

Galileo, 15, 

Garnett, Dr. Richard, 6, 15, 21 

note, 27, 37, 72, 73, 88, no, 

143, 181, 200, 213, 225, 226, 

229, 238, 239, 244, 245, 
Gauden, Bishop, his " Eikon 

Basilike," 38. 
Gibbon, Edward, 8, 164, 
Gill, Dr. Alexander, 6. 
Goethe, 14, 242, 246; his 

" Faust," 223. 
Gosse, Edmund, 155. 
Gray, Thomas, 57, 86, 1 19; his 

" Elegy," 118, 170. 
Grotius, 15; his "Adamus 

Exul," 213. 
Green, Matthew, 86. 



INDEX 



281 



Guarini, 113; his " Pastor 

Fido," 104, 143. 
Guest, Dr. Richard, 138, 142. 

H. 

Hall, Bishop, 160. 

Hallam, Henry, 63, 65, 73, iii, 
143, 190. 

Handel, 86. 

Hartlib, Samuel, 158. 

Hobson (the carrier), 61, 124. 

?Iolstein, Lucas, 16 note. 

Homer, 45, 91, 108, 201, 222, 
223, 227, 269, 270, 271; his 
" Iliad," 202, 210, 218, 219, 
221; his " Odyssey," 114. 

Hooker, Richard, 163. 

Horace, 176, 191. 

Hughes, John, 86. 

Hugo, Victor, 223. 

Hume, Patrick, 249. 

Huxley, Prof. T. H., 49. 

I. 
Italian poets, influence of, on 
Milton, 14, 94-95, 114, 142- 
^A% 245. 

J. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 65, 73, 
104, 105, 109, 130, 142, 143, 
197, 245. 

Jones, Richard, t^})- 

Jonson, Ben, 6, 102, 106, 107, 
no, 113, 115-116, 123, 125, 
126; his memorial verses 
on Shakspere, 124; his 
" Pleasure Reconciled to 
Virtue," 115-116. 



K. 
Keats, John, 57. 
King, Edward, 1 26-129, 134, 

138, 148, 251. 
King, Henry, 129. 
King, Sir John, 126. 

L. 

Lamb, Charles, his " On an 

Infant, etc.," 121. 
Landor, Walter Savage, 14, 57, 

72, 143 note, 225, 227, 270. 
Laud, Archbishop, 8, 10, 1 1, 

12, 21, 23. 
Lauder, William, 211. 
Lawes, Henry, 96, 97, 100, loi, 

102, 189, 251. 
Lawrence, Henry, 43, 89, 189. 
Ley, Lady Margaret, 189. 
Lovelace, Richard, his elegy 

on the Princess Katherine, 

121. 
Lowell, James Russell, 57, 155, 

163, 165 note. 

M. 
Macaulay, Lord, 104, 164, 180, 

245- 
McEcenas, 77. 
Manso, Marquis, 17, 74, 77, 78, 

152. 
Marini, 17, 67, 69, 186. 
Marlowe, Christopher, 2, 86. 
Marot, Clement, his pastoral 

on Louise of Savoy, 137. 
Martin, Sir Theodore, 191. 
Marvell, Andrew, 43. 
Masson, Prof. David, 7, 26, 52, 

77» 79» 80, 94, 103 note, 115, 



282 



INDEX 



35. 
18, 19, 



116, 127, 128, 171, 191, 211, 
212 note, 216, 237, 249, 258, 
265, 

Michelangelo, 55. 

Mill, John Stuart, 3. 

Milton, Christopher, 19 

Milton, John, Sr., 2, 3, 
35» 74, 77, 80, 98. 

Milton, John, birth, I; family, 
2-3 ; early schooling, 4-6 ; 
at Cambridge, 6-9 ; at Hor- 
ton, 10-13 ; travels in Italy, 
14-17; teaches school, 19; 
marriage, 25-33 ; serves as 
Latin Secretary, 37-45; loses 
his sight, 39-40 ; escapes 
at the Restoration, 46-47; 
writes his great poems, 48- 
50; death, 52. 

, , his Arianism, 10, 

181; character as an artist, 
6,14,54-55,250-252; char- 
acter as a man, 55-56; con- 
troversial methods, 177-179; 
his idealism, 22, 53-54; his 
imagination, 253-255; his 
influence on English litera- 
ture, 56-58; his love of art, 
16; his love of nature, 12- 
^3r 70, 90-91; his metrical 
skill, 66-68, 81, 82-83, 94- 
95, 125, 140-143, 190-191, 
244-245, 262-268; his per- 
sonal purity, 8, 194; his 
prose style, 164-165; his 
relations with women, 31- 
2)^, 271-272; as a quasi- 
dramatist, 107-110, 268- 
269; his syntax, 258-263; 
his vocabulary, 151, 162- 



163, 257-258; use of proper 
names, 240, 255-256. 

, , chief works of, 

Anti- Episcopal Tracts, 22- 

23, 159-161, 183 note. 
Arcades, 13, 59, 82, 83, 93, 

95, 96-99. 
Areopagitica, 31, 57, 156, 

158, 169, 170. 
At a Solemn Music, 93-95. 
At a Vacation Exercise^ 62- 

63. 
Comus, 13, 59, 76, 82, 83, 

93. 95, 96-118, 141, 203, 
204, 238, 243, 245, 246, 
258, 264, 267, 268. 

De Doctrina Christiana, 35, 

51, 158, 180-181. 
Divorce Pamphlets, 26-29, 

165-169. 
Eikonoklastes, 37-38, 170- 

172. 
Elegy on a Fair Infant, 61, 

62, 68, 120-123. 
Epitaph on the Marchioness 

of Winchester, 61, 81, 83, 

125-126. 
Epitaphiiim Damonis, 5, 18, 

59, 71, 73, 74, 78, "9, 

148, 149, 150-153, 251. 
First Defence (against Sal- 

masius), 40, 170, 173. 
History of Britain, 35, 51, 

158, 179. 
// Pejiseroso, 13, 59, 79-92, 

94, 267. 

L Allegro, 13, 59, 79-92, 94, 

258, 267. 
Latin Verses, 3, 4, 9, 16, 17, 

18,33,70,71-78,148-153. 



INDEX 



283 



Lycidas, 13, 59, 61, 83, 93, 
94, 117, 120, 126-148, 154, 
203, 204, 258, 264, 267. 

Nativity Ode, 9, 61, 63-68, 
82, 93. 

Of Education, 19, 158, 170. 

On Hobson, 61, 124. 

On Shakspere, 9, 61, 81, 
123-124. 

On the Passion, 64, 69-70, 

93- 

Paradise Lost, 15, 21, 23, 

32, ZZ, 34, 38, 44, 48-49» 
56, 93, 108, no, 118, 140, 
141, 154, 181, 183, 193- 
233, 234, 236-240, 246, 
251* 253, 254-255, 258, 
259, 261, 264, 274-276. 
. Paradise Regained, 48, 49- 
50, 234-241, 245, 246, 
247, 251, 256, 269. 
Samson Agonistes, Ty'i^, 48, 
49-50, 234-236, 240-248, 
251, 264, 268. 
Second Defence (against Mo- 
ras), 4 note, 13 7tote, 42, 
174-175, 188 710 te. 
Song on May Morning, 9, 

61, 70, 80. 
Sonnets, 9, 20, 24, 43, 61, 

184-191, 251. 
Tenure of Kings and Mag- 
istrates^ 36, 1 70-1 71. 
Milton, Sarah Jeffrey, 3, 18. 
Mimnermus, 91. 
Minshull, Elizabeth (Milton's 

third wife), 31, 47. 
Minto, Prof. William, 136. 
Montrose, Marquis of, his 
epitaph on Charles I., 123. 



More, Henry, 7, 127, 129. 

More, Sir Thomas, his " Lam- 
entation, etc.," 68. 

Morus, Alexander, 41-42, 174- 
176, 213. 

Moschus, 130; his "Lament 
for Bion," 137, 139, 147, 

151- 

Moseley, Humphrey, t,^. 

N. 

Newman, Cardinal John Henry, 

164. 
" Nibelungenlied," 219. 



Ochino, Bernardino, 213. 

Ormond, Earl of, 173. 

Ovid, 73, 74 note; his " Meta- 
morphoses," 114; his "Elegy 
on Tibullus," 137. 

P. 

Pastoral Poetry, 120, 1 30- 1 33. 
Pattison, Mark, 19, 44, 65, 143, 

151, 152, 156 note, 163, 186, 

205, 245-246. 
Peele, George, his " Old Wives' 

Tale," 1 1 2-1 13. 
Petrarch, 185, 187, 191. 
Phillips, Mrs. Anne. See Agar. 
Phillips, Edward, 19, 26, 185. 
Phillips, John, 19. 
Philostratus, his " Imagines," 

US- 
Plato, 77, 81. 

Pope, Alexander, 57, 86, 124. 
Powell, Mary (Milton's first 

wife), 25-33, 34-35. 
Powell, Richard, 25, 26. 



284 



INDEX 



Propertius, 146; his elegy on 
Pgetus, 133, 137, 147. 

Prynne, Wm., his " Histriomas- 
tix," 100. 

Puteanus, his "Comus," 113, 
115, 116. 

Q. 

Quarles, Francis, 69. 

R. 

Ranelagh, Lady, 23- 
Raphael, 55, 199, 229. 
Rota, Bernardino, 31, 190. 
Rous, John, 73, 75. 
Ruskin, John, 164. 



Saintsbury, Prof. George, 105, 
no. 

Salmasius, 38, 40, 41, 174-176. 

Salzilli, G., 76. 

Scherer, E., 207, 210. 

Schopenhauer, 207. 

Shakspere, William, i, 9, ii, 
12, 14, 45, 51, 52, 56, 81, 98, 
113, 117, 123, 124, 146, 162, 
173 noU, 176, 196, 222, 227, 
229, 242, 253, 257-258, 259, 
260, 263, 267, 269, 270, 271, 
272-277 (compared with 
Milton) ; his " Hamlet," 199, 
231; his "Lear," 246; his 
"Othello," 108, 231, 273; 
his Sonnets, 136, 189; his 
"Troilus and Cressida," 273. 

Shelley, P. B., 8, 14, 57; his 
"Adonais," 133, 138, 144, 
146. 

Simmons, Samuel, 48, 49, 234. 

Skinner, Cyriack, 43, 188, 189. 



Sophocles, 91. 

Spencer, Herbert, 259. 

Spenser, Edmund, ii, 60, 68, 
69, 86, 87, 96, III, 113, 
114, 132, 223; his "Astro- 
phel," 130, 137; his "Faerie 
Queene," 116-117. 

Starkey, John, 234. 

Strafford, Earl of, 21. 

Surrey, Earl of, 190. 

Swinburne, A. C, 25, 57, 126. 

Sylvester, Joshua, 60, 69, 86. 



Tasso, 17, 77, 113, 219, 223; 

his " Aminta," 104, 143. 
Taylor, Bishop Jeremy, 163. 
Tennyson, Alfred, 59, 90, 143 

no^e, 253; his "In Memo- 

riam," 134. 
Theocritus, 130, 131, 139; his 

First Idyll, 137, ^S^- 
Thompson, Mrs. Catherine, 189. 
Thomson, James, 57, 263. 
TibuUus, 137, 146. 
Tomkyns, Rev. Thomas, 48, 

234. 

U. 

Usher, Archbishop, 160. 

V. 

Vane, Sir H., Jr., 188. 

Verity, A. W., 88, 116 no^e, 
143 no/e. 

Virgil, 34, 73. 74 «^^^» 13°. 
140, 145, 224, 227; his 
" /Eneid," 219; his Eclogues, 

U7^ 139- 
Voltaire, 212; his " Candide," 
207. 



INDEX 



285 



Vondel, J., 212 note, 213-215 
(his " Lucifer ") ; his " Sam- 
son," 243. 



W. 

Warton, Thomas, 73, 86, 98. 
Washington, George, 24, 55. 
Watts- Dunton, Theodore, 107, 
268. 



Woodcock, Katherine (Mil- 
Ion's second wife), 31, 190. 

Wordsworth, William, 13, 57, 
91, 92, 236, 262; his "Ode 
on the Intimations, etc.," 65, 
267; his Sonnets, 184. 

Wotton, Sir Henry, loi, no. 



Young, Rev. Thomas, 4, 74, 76. 



615 



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